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More "Flop" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shoulders, poked the hat over the eyes, and hampered the free action of the arms, began to wear on me. Try as I may, I cannot master the little sidewise shift of the pack which the captain showed us, and which Godwin says makes shooting prone "just as easy!" Looking at the other men, I often saw them flop on their faces to rest; they were working as hard as on the range. The pretense of firing, when our cartridges were gone, took away some of the excitement. Then at about the fifth dash, which the others took ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... was a grasshopper lived in a palm-tree, Silver-voiced as a frog in June; Was not pleas'd with his situation, Thought he'd like to go to the moon. Oh! Heigh-ho! . . . How shall I get there? oh! . . . A hop and a skip and a flop and a flip, and over the clouds ...
— The Nursery, April 1878, Vol. XXIII. No. 4 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... big room did not find it very easy to bear. His hair was always brushed straight up, his eyes were always very wide open,—and he usually carried a big letter-book with him, keeping in it a certain place with his finger. This book was almost too much for his strength, and he would flop it down, now on this man's desk and now on that man's, and in along career of such floppings had made himself to be very much hated. On the score of some old grudge he and Mr Love did not speak to each other; and for this reason, on all occasions ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... quadruped, prone to startling humanity by erratic leaps, and wild plunges, much shaking of his stubborn head, and lashing out of his vicious heels; now and then falling flat, and apparently dying a la Forrest; a gasp—a squirm—a flop, and so on, till the street was well blocked up, the drivers all swearing like demons in bad hats, and the chief actor's circulation decidedly quickened by every variety of kick, cuff, jerk, and haul. ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... leg, then with another, against Jeremy's coat; then he would lie dead for a moment, suddenly springing, with his head up, in the hope that the surprise would free him; then he would turn into a snake, twisting his body under Jeremy's arm, and dropping with a flop on to the floor. All these manoeuvres to-day availed him nothing; Jeremy held his neck in a vice, and dug his fingers well into the skin. Hamlet whined, then lay still, and, in the midst of indignant reflections against ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... My "gang" was still looking for work and not finding any. Times were desperate. For five cents a man could get a glass of beer and floor room to sleep on in a lodging-house for homeless men. This was called a "Five Cent Flop" house. My pals were not able at times to raise the five cents a day to buy sleeping quarters. It was late fall and too cold to sleep in the "jungle" down by the levee. The poor fellows were able to stave off ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... beyond the doorway. Something touched the blanket as though seeking support. Then it slid down, its movement visible in the bulging of the drenched cloth. This was followed by a heavy, squelching flop. The body, whatever it was, had fallen into the streaming water pouring from within the hut. Then came a long-drawn, piteous moan that held the men gazing silently and stupidly at the ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... a window, climbed to a roof. Then bang, bang, bang, seven shots went at him rapidly, one after another. In spite of the volley the man still crawled upwards, but as he reached the top of the low house and passed his legs over he gave a feeble moan and then.... flopper-ti flop, flopper-ti flop, he crashed down the other side and ended with a dull thud on the ground. On the other side there he was dead as a door-nail and all covered with blood. It was our first proper work. ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... everything happened! Grisha will keep up his character, too. Although he is a blockhead, he has some sense. Now he'll flop down on the hay and he'll lie there on ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... about it. With his feet gone quite stiff, the patient didn't help me a bit. Then at last the legs of it—they'd been pulled about so—came unstuck at the knees, and his breeks tore away, and all the lot came, flop! There was me, all of a sudden, with a full boot in each fist. The legs and feet ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... Beasley!" shouted Inez, to the woman in the kitchen. "Two of them eggs sunny-side up, flop the other." ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... that spawned a dud. Their necks to Truman's ax uncurled Lo, the embattled savants stood, and fired the flop ...
— Trinity [Atomic Test] Site - The 50th Anniversary of the Atomic Bomb • The National Atomic Museum
... on, don't be a tightwad. Swell car—poor man with no eats, not even a two-bits flop for tonight. Could yuh loosen up and slip me just ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... the next morning, he couldn't think where he was. He tried to flop over, as he could so easily do when sleeping on his wolf-skins in the cave. But he found himself securely tied. He lifted his head and looked out. The sun was just rising over the blue hills across the river. He looked down through the tree-branches ...
— The Cave Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... leap out of the water, head over heels, as they did before a shower came on; but somehow he never could manage it. He liked most, though, to see them rising at the flies, as they sailed round and round under the shadow of the great oak, where the beetles fell flop into the water, and the green caterpillars let themselves down from the boughs by silk ropes for no reason at all; and then changed their foolish minds for no reason at all, either; and hauled themselves up again into the tree, rolling up the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... better calculated to make one flop than a bullet," she laughed. Not yet did the tragedy of the broken ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... to one side, old and frayed, like the fat, shaggy, gray mare that drew it; her unchecked, despondent head lowering before her, while her incongruous tail waved incessantly, like the banner of a storming party. The editor did not hear the flop of the mare's feet nor the sound of the wheels, so deep was his reverie, till the vehicle was nearly opposite him. The red-faced and perspiring driver drew rein, and the journalist looked up and waved a long white ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... shady side of the bunk-house staring absently at the skyline, "There's a word uh praise I've been aiming to give yuh. I've seen riding, and I've done a trifle in that line myself, and learned some uh the tricks. But I want to say I never did see a man flop his horse any neater than you done that morning. I'll bet there ain't another man in the outfit got next your play. I couldn't uh done it better myself. Where did you learn that? Ever ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... have hurt you. None of these flop-over Janes for me!... An' I'll give you a hunch, Pretty Eyes. You might have run acrost a fellar thet was ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... saw three tiny old females stumble forward, three very formerly and even once bonnets perched upon three wizened skulls, and flop clumsily before the priest, and take the wafer ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... chairs had disappeared, and nice light elegant chairs were bought, insufficient, however, for heavy weights, for one of Mr. Furze's affluent customers being brought to the Terrace as a special mark of respect, and sitting down with a flop, as was his wont, smashed the work of art like card-board and went down on the door with a curse, vowing inwardly never again to set foot in Furze's Folly, as he called it. The pictures, too, were all renewed. The "Virgin Mary" ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... certain, because I saw him flop over," replied the other; "and that yelp meant sudden pain, as sure as it stood for anything. But he managed to get off, though possibly he will fall ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... he wuz foun' out, an' he riz up an' give his gre't, wide wings a big flop, lak dis, an' swoop out de do' cryin' 'Oo-goo-coo! Oo-goo-coo!' ez he flewed off inter de darkness." Here Aunt 'Phrony spread her arms like wings and made a swoop half-way across the room to the bedside of the startled children. "An'," she continued, "de wind howl ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... look for him and leaned back so far that he almost fell flop off the elephant's back. Tody caught him just in time or there ...
— Seven O'Clock Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... pray tree times eby day. At de fus peepin' uv de day, Brer Dan'l he usen fur ter hop outn his bed and git down on his knees; and soon's eber de horn hit blowed fur de hans ter come outn de field fur dinner, Brer Dan'l he went in his house, he did, and he flop right back on 'is knees. And wen de sun set, den dar he wuz agin er prayin' and er strivin' wid ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... That was the price he had always to pay for bread or butter or jam. Finally, she gave him the bread and let him go. Down the back steps he came, running eagerly and calling Frank. Once more in the kitchen began the flop of the churn, once more rose the ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... against the low rocks, swirling, passing. Better get this job over quick. Listen: a fourworded wavespeech: seesoo, hrss, rsseeiss, ooos. Vehement breath of waters amid seasnakes, rearing horses, rocks. In cups of rocks it slops: flop, slop, slap: bounded in barrels. And, spent, its speech ceases. It flows purling, widely ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... interrupted Slone. The bullet missed, but Slone made a pretense, a convulsive flop, as ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... relinquishing all prospects of wearing the Muscovite diadem, returned to Paris and Dujarier. Her lover's influence secured her an engagement in La Biche au Bois at the Porte St. Martin Theatre; but, as had happened at the Academie Royale, she was a "flop." The critics said so with no uncertain voice; and the manager announced that he agreed with them. Clearly, then, the ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... goat to the little trees, and set to work. I held Frank while he skinned; and then he held me while I skinned. It was very awkward. The tiny landscape almost directly beneath us was blue with the atmosphere of distance. A solitary raven discovered us, and began to circle and croak and flop. ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... him, keep terrifying of him," whispers Tom; "he's bound to make a mistake sooner or later." So we try again, and at the same moment that the fly floats down over the monster's nose he moves a foot to the right and takes a live may-fly with a big roll and a flop. ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... agonies, that the heart of an intending occupant might well recoil. A plank, by way of flying drawbridge, joined it to the shore. And it was a dreary moment for Jimson when he pulled this after him and found himself alone on this unwholesome fortress. He could hear the rats scuttle and flop in the abhorred interior; the key cried among the wards like a thing in pain; the sitting-room was deep in dust, and smelt strong of bilge-water. It could not be called a cheerful spot, even for a composer absorbed in beloved toil; how much less for a young gentleman haunted by alarms ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... screech; but this chicken may have been overcome by the heat (it was a land breeze and it drew like the breath of a furnace over the hay-cocks and the clover), or it may have mistimed the wheel, which passed over its head and left it to flop a moment in the dust and then fall still. The poor little tragedy was sufficiently distressful to me, but I bore it well, compared with my driver. He could hardly stop lamenting it; and when presently we met a young farmer, he pulled up. "You goin' past Jim Marden's?" ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... her in London. She made her escape out of the house whilst we had gone for a ride in the park. When we returned from our ride, instead of hearing her joyous bark of welcome, and seeing her flop down in her excitement the last four steps of the staircase, as was her wont, we were met instead by the anxious face of the butler, who told us Rory had run out ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... watch the bannock bake — how restful is the air! You'd little think that we were somewhere north of Sixty-three, Though where I don't exactly know, and don't precisely care. The man-size mountains palisade us round on every side; The river is a-flop with fish, and ripples silver-clear; The midnight sunshine brims yon cleft — we think it's the Divide; We'll get there in a month, maybe, or maybe in ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... "How dare you? I am a weak, defenceless woman; I won't endure it. My husband is a collegiate assessor. You screw! . . . I will go to Dmitri Karlitch, the lawyer, and there will be nothing left of you! I've had the law of three lodgers, and I will make you flop down at my feet for your saucy words! I'll go to your general. Your ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the wind doth blow, It sets a pace And hits our face And we are froze Down to the toes And in the slush, That's just like mush, We cannot stop, But go ker-flop!" ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)
... toward a miniature rapid in the middle of the beck. Lydia, clinging with one hand to a stump of willow, caught up a stick lying on the bank with the other, and, hanging over the stream, tried to head back the truant. All that happened was that her foot slipping on a pebble went flop into the shallow water, and part of ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... He gave me a flop on the cheek with the back of his head as he shook himself loose, and I didn't stop to give him another chance. But you did bring that down smart, and no mistake. Let's ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... vases. The heavy chairs had disappeared, and nice light elegant chairs were bought, insufficient, however, for heavy weights, for one of Mr. Furze's affluent customers being brought to the Terrace as a special mark of respect, and sitting down with a flop, as was his wont, smashed the work of art like card-board and went down on the door with a curse, vowing inwardly never again to set foot in Furze's Folly, as he called it. The pictures, too, were all renewed. The "Virgin Mary" and "George the Fourth" went upstairs to the spare bedroom, ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... of heroic mould as are its men. Sons of the open, deep-chested, tall and straight, they ride like conquerors and walk—like bears. Slow to anger and quick to act, they carry their strength and health easily and with a dignity which no worn trappings, faded shirt, or flop-brimmed hat may obscure. Speak to one of them and his level gaze will travel to your feet and back again to your eyes. He may not know what you are, but he assuredly knows what you are not. He will answer you quietly and to the point. If you have been fortunate ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... replied Texas, fingering the wound as roughly as if it had been in the flesh of a beast. "Reckon he'll flop round. May do mischief, if we ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... on, Isham! Sing on, da'kies! But I flop my wings an' go Fu' de sheltah of de ve'y highest tree, Fu' dey 's too much close ertention—an' dey's too much fallin' snow— An' it's too nigh Chris'mus mo'nin' now ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... new puppy. Is not he a dear? I'll let you hold him,' and she attempted to deposit the fat, curly, satiny creature in Dolores's arms, which instantly hung down stiff, as she answered, half in fright, 'I hate dogs!' The puppy fell down with a flop, and began to squeak, while the girls, crying, 'Oh! Dolly, how could you!' and 'Poor little pup!' all crowded round in pity and indignation, and Wilfred observed, 'I ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... don't know. I thought I could, but now I ain't so sure. I could make 'em whirl 'round and 'round like a mill or a set of sailor paddles, but to make 'em flap is different. They've got to be put on strong enough so they won't flop off. You see," he added, solemnly, "if they kept floppin' off they wouldn't keep flappin' on. There's all the difference in the world between ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... like to flop m'lip over one of her biscuits right now," he said aloud. "If I do strike it, I wonder will she git too high-toned ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... and a Cow Brand Soda cap on, stealthily closed the gate. Johnny didn't know he had on a Cow Brand Soda cap, and he didn't know that the gate was shut, but he did know that that kind of a yell meant business. He wasn't afraid. Pshaw! He'd give young Mr. Flop-Ears a run for his money. Come on, kid—r-r-r-r-r! Johnny ran straight to the gate with a rabbit's unerring instinct, and hurled himself against it in vain. The flop-eared boy screamed with laughter. Then there ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... beauty without fear, and as she sat there she heard an ever-increasing number of little sounds; they were caused by she knew not what: small creatures moving among the pine needles, night birds on the watch for prey, water rats, the flop of fish, the fall of some leaf over-ripe on the tree, her own slow breathing, the muffled ticking of her heart; and into this orchestra of tiny instruments there came slowly, and as if it grew out of all ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... happy and beautiful in life and mean; they can spend their lives in jest as honerable and worthy a way as if they wuz a flyin' round, and make a good honerable appearance from day to day, till they begin to flop their wings, and fly — then their mean is not beautiful and inspirin'; no, it is fur from it. It is tuff to see 'em, tuff to see the floppin', tuff to see their vain efforts to soar through the air, tuff to see 'em fall ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... to think about it any more, thank goodness," Jane exclaimed, rising from the grass and laying a hand on the bag. "Let's put an end to the whole thing now and go home. Take a holt of the other end, and we'll flop it in." ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... stuck tighter than those cakes adhered to that griddle; she worked carefully, she insinuated her knife under just the outer edge of the cake, then gradually approached the centre, but when the final flop came, they went into little sticky hopeless heaps. "They are too thin," she ejaculated. "Joanna, bring flour. Now we shall have it all right." Then another set took their places on the griddle; these held together, they turned—triumph ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... they are ready. For a moment they stand and squirm like angle-worms on a hook, and froth at the mouth, and look, as they stand there, like a pile driver that has been run into by an engine. They teeter up and down a little, and then fly off on a tangent, and they flop around in unexpected places among the other dancers, jump like a box car, bump against other couples, and at every bump they are driven closer together, until they are so near that it does seem as though they will have to be pried apart with a handspike; they look into each other's ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... persisted Phillida, who was a zealous convert. "The dances are to make you graceful always. You so get into the poetry of motion that it's quite impossible for you ever to flop again!" ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... it somehow, so I came straight off here, through the Wild Wood and the snow! My! it was fine, coming through the snow as the red sun was rising and showing against the black tree-trunks! As you went along in the stillness, every now and then masses of snow slid off the branches suddenly with a flop! making you jump and run for cover. Snow-castles and snow-caverns had sprung up out of nowhere in the night—and snow bridges, terraces, ramparts—I could have stayed and played with them for hours. Here and there great branches ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... beauty sleep already." His voice was dryly sarcastic. "It's too bad you rode this far for nothing; can't even get a look at me. But it's no time to visit a man, anyway. You and your boys flop outside. We'll swap palaver in the ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... continuous "whirr," the sound growing fainter and fainter till it finally ceases; but if it should run down with the notched side downward, the friction of the point against the table will reduce this final whirr to half its ordinary length, and the coin will finally go down with a sort of "flop." The difference of sound is not sufficiently marked to attract the notice of the spectators, but is perfectly distinguishable by an attentive ear. If, therefore, you have notched the coin on the "tail" side, and ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... stifling as a June night can be, and the loo, the red-hot wind from the westward, was booming among the tinder-dry trees and pretending that the rain was on its heels. Now and again a spot of almost boiling water would fall on the dust with the flop of a frog, but all our weary world knew that was only pretence. It was a shade cooler in the press-room than the office, so I sat there, while the type ticked and clicked, and the night-jars hooted at the ...
— The Man Who Would Be King • Rudyard Kipling
... rationing parties, and such-like. Every night our supports were heavily shelled; every road leading to the lines had a battery trained on it and every little while it was swept by shrapnel. We gradually got used to the danger, and if they started to shell the road we were on we would flop into a ditch or shell hole till the storm had passed. Speaking of this reminds me of something that happened in that first week. A party of us were carrying coke to the front line, and we had two sacks each; I ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... of Skeensboro, when I was baskin' in the sunshine of offishal life, and had a politikle ax to grind, MARIAR'S biled dinners used to fetch Polerticians to their milk, ekal to the way a big dinner at DELMONICO'S, N.Y., will flop over a New ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 27, October 1, 1870 • Various
... gradually it quickened to the ferocious snarling roar, the charge song, as the tiger rushed forward and leaped against the side of the house with a heavy jarring thud. A shriek from all the seven throats went up on the instant, and then came a scratching, tearing sound, followed by a soft, dull flop, as the tiger, failing to effect a landing on the low roof, fell back to earth. The men started to their feet, clutching their weapons convulsively, and, led by Che' Seman, they raised, above the shrieks of the frightened women, a lamentable attempt at a ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... an' you see de han's, an' you tink dat dey kin go an' do like oder han's an' feet, but dey doesn't an' dey can't. Dere ain't no backbone runnin' up troo de min' an' wen dere ain't no backbone in de min' de pusson jest flop down yere an' flop down dar whareber dere's a com'fo'ble place to flop. Dere's 'flictions dat we kin pray agin an' pray out'n ob, an' dere's oders we jes got ter bar, an' we gits so kinder used to'm at las dat we'd be mo' mis'ble ef dey wuz tooken ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... by the big toe. 'Hands up, Hans'! I said, and he didn't argue, all that he did was to swear like one of ourselves and flop down. 'Why don't ye bury yer sausages, Hans?' I asked (p. 079) him. 'I smelt yer, me bucko, by what ye couldn't eat. Why didn't ye have something better than water in yer bottle?' I says to him. Dang a Christian word would he answer, only swear, an swear ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... chance to go on. He just grabbed her, and got her away in a hurry—and Charley went to fussing with the cover of the wheel, putting it on again, so she couldn't get at him to shake hands for good-bye. He said afterwards he felt that weak, when he fairly was shut of her, all he could do was to flop down into a chair anyway and sing out to Blister Mike to come and get the sheets off the bar quick and give him his own bottle of Bourbon and a tumbler. And he said he never took so many drinks, one right on top of another, since he ...
— Santa Fe's Partner - Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town • Thomas A. Janvier
... pound. From the kitchen window above his head came the flop-flop of a churn, accompanied by the wailing song of Aunt Cindy, the cook. Tommy glanced shrewdly up at this window from whence proceeded the melancholy refrain. He must not let Aunt Cindy see him leave the yard. That morning after breakfast his father and mother had driven ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... tired out, and you think you never saw such a nice bass, and that it weighs at least six pounds, and just as you are reaching out with the landing net, to take him in, he gives one kick, chews off the line, you fall over backwards, and the bass disappears with a parting flop of the tail, and a man who is fishing a little ways off asks you what you had on your hook, and you say that it was nothing but a confounded dogfish, anyway, and you wind up your reel and go home, and you are so mad and hot that the leaves on the trees curl up ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck
... added Terry, "because he lost his gun that now that he has also lost his knife he may get so much madder that he'll flop over and become ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... will place on my mother's. You can pick my mother out by a small piece of grass which I will put in her hair, and you can pick me out from my cousins, for when we commence to dance, I will shake my head, flop my ears and switch my tail. You must choose quickly, as they will be very angry at your success, and if you lose any time they will make the excuse that you did not know, that they may have an excuse to trample you ...
— Myths and Legends of the Sioux • Marie L. McLaughlin
... was brought; too short and too narrow. A spoon; better, but still inadequate. An outsider suggested that all hands lay hold of the thing on one side and flop it over suddenly. But the jealous proprietors demurred, fearing that the movement might not be simultaneous and that thus a flap-jack rupture might ensue, followed by possible skedaddling of the shrewd ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... don't!" I yells, jumpin' to my feet an' blushin' clear to my ears. "I ain't neither one o' your parents an' I ain't your teacher. If you want to know things you ask Melisse. If you don't put a curb on yourself I'm goin' to flop myself on Starlight an' streak for the Lion Head this very minute, an' I won't stop before ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... business. We feel now that there are romantic possibilities about letters setting forth on their journey from our floor. To start life with so many flipperties might lead to anything. Each time that we send a letter off we listen in a tremble of excitement for the final FLOP, and when it comes I think we both feel vaguely that we are still waiting for something. We are waiting to hear some magic letter go flipperty-flipperty-flipperty-flipperty ... and behold! there is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 28, 1917 • Various
... soon as he had expended all his breath in shouting for help, sat down with such a flop of despair on the thwart of the boat, as very nearly to swamp it. As it was, the water poured over the starboard gunwale, until the boat was filled up to his ankles. This alarmed him still more, and he remained mute as a stock-fish for a quarter of an hour, during which he was swept away by ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... making this request, While tears and curses drop, Please send along a booklet on What Makes the Engine Stop. The folk around here all await With interest your reply: To them the reasons why she goes Don't seem to signify. So while we wait and chew the cud Don't let the matter flop; For Gawd's sake write and let us know What makes ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... looked at my watch. It was twenty past four. Reveille would be at half-past five, so I abandoned myself to more than another hour, so I thought, of delicious indolence. I closed my eyes and was beginning to doze and dream again when I heard the flop, flop of heavy feet treading the mud and slush outside. The canvas of the tent was banged violently and a voice, which I recognized as that of the ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... said Miss Jemima. "I wish I could play it and the piano both. You have to run round and round, and then, when the music stops, you flop down on the nearest chair, and there's always one left out, and the last one wins ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... a drop of any kind in him. If I wanted him to go on one side of the road he was sure to be possessed of an equal desire to go on the other side. Finally I and my mule fell out. I got a big hickory and would frail him over the head, and he would only shake his head and flop his ears, and seem to say, "Well, now, you think you are smart, don't you?" He was a resolute mule, slow to anger, and would have made an excellent merchant to refuse bad pay, or I will pay your credit, for his whole composition seemed to be made up the one word—no. I frequently ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... still looking for work and not finding any. Times were desperate. For five cents a man could get a glass of beer and floor room to sleep on in a lodging-house for homeless men. This was called a "Five Cent Flop" house. My pals were not able at times to raise the five cents a day to buy sleeping quarters. It was late fall and too cold to sleep in the "jungle" down by the levee. The poor fellows were able to stave off starvation by visiting various free ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... and their white petals beginning to unclose. But what slippery stalks they had. Aunt Emma held Milly, and father held Olly, while they dived their hands under the water and pulled hard. And some of the lilies came out with such short bits of stalk you could scarcely hold them, and sometimes, flop! out came a long green stalk, like a long green snake curling and twisting about in the boat. The children dabbled, and splashed, and pulled, to their hearts' content, till at last Mr. Norton told them they had got enough and now they must sit quite still while he rowed ...
— Milly and Olly • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sad! oh, dire to tell!" (Said BAINES). "Be good enough to stop." And senseless on the floor he fell, With unpremeditated flop! ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... Shif'less Sol; "but if I'd been through what I reckon you've been through, I'd fall flop on the ground, an' Jim Hart would have to come an' feed me or I'd starve to death right before ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... situation. They say, chuckling to themselves, 'that villain's got his dose at last, and serve him right too.' They want to enjoy his struggles, while the heroine stands grimly at the door taking care that he doesn't get away. Then when my fist comes down flop on the stage and they realise that I am indeed done for, the yell of triumph that goes up is something delicious ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... sweeping away her traces with the broom. She dashed up to the fiery river, gave a glance, and said, 'A capital bridge!' She drove on to the bridge, but had only got half-way when the bridge broke in two, and the Baba Yaga went flop into the river. There truly did she ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... contrived to get a tree or bush between him and me, just at the critical instant. In despair I tried to hold on the last one, got a bead on it through my peep sight, moved it with him as we moved, and holding tight, I fired. With a great flop and scattering of bronze feathers he went down. I ran up the slope and secured him, a fine gobbler of about ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... on brick pillars. The roofs of these are rather steep, and are mostly tiled, and have deep eaves, but do not as elsewhere form the cover of the veranda. While I was looking through the cactus screen of one of these houses, a man came out with a number of low caste, leggy, flop-eared, mangy dogs, who attacked me in a cowardly bullying fashion, yelping, barking, and making surreptitious snaps at my feet. Their owner called them off, however, and pelted them so successfully that some ran away whimpering, ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... flop yo' wings w'en you laff, kaze den if you duz, sump'n 'ill drap fum up yer, en my gol'-mine won't do you no good, en needer will yone do me ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... were shaking, but he answered gravely: "Well that's a way it has of puffing itself up and making a great big pretense that it is going to flop us, and then if just little Bobbie or Ma waves an apron or a stick it gets out of the way in ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... him thirsty, so he flew over to the Round Pond to have a drink. He stooped, and dipped his beak in the pond; he thought it was his beak, but, of course, it was only his nose, and, therefore, very little water came up, and that not so refreshing as usual, so next he tried a puddle, and he fell flop into it. When a real bird falls in flop, he spreads out his feathers and pecks them dry, but Peter could not remember what was the thing to do, and he decided, rather sulkily, to go to sleep on the weeping ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... a colour and length of flowering season to be used in jungle-like masses for summer colour? Second—has it fragrance or decorative quality for house decoration? Thirdly, has it the backbone to stand alone or will the plant flop and flatten shapelessly at the first hard shower and so render an array of conspicuous stakes necessary? Stakes, next to unsightly insecticides and malodorous fertilizers, are the bane of gardening, but that subject is big enough for a ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... Hall he had run flop into the arms of Mrs Stratton, who was carrying in her hands a small ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... collecting; it is not safe to put an inexperienced or nervous rider on a horse that has not been taught to carry a habit, which a groom can do by riding the animal with a rug or dark overcoat on the near side, and letting it flop about. Horses rarely object to the presence of a skirt, though I have known cases in which the animal went almost wild with terror when the right leg was put over the crutch. It is, therefore, wise to accustom a horse to the ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... brother's "little girl" Fleur frankly puzzled Winifred. The child was as restless as any of these modern young women—"She's a small flame in a draught," Prosper Profond had said one day after dinner—but she did not flop, or talk at the top of her voice. The steady Forsyteism in Winifred's own character instinctively resented the feeling in the air, the modern girl's habits and her motto: "All's much of a muchness! Spend, to-morrow we ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... that bed more than anything else, which makes me feel that it's always Sunday in my room at Mrs. Ess Kay's. I'm used to old-fashioned, ruffly pillows and a plain white coverlet smelling of lavender, on which I can flop down whenever I like, to read a novel or to have a nice little "weep." But there's no flopping on this gorgeous pink and silver expanse, and it's small consolation to know that no queen of England ever ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... having checked his rapid, head-first and head-on slide down the slanting wire by grasping it in his gloved hands, gave a "flip-flop" and stood up, bowing to the loud applause. Jim Tracy and some of the other circus employees ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... fun they had; and he used to try to leap out of the water, head over heels, as they did before a shower came on; but somehow he never could manage it. He liked most, though, to see them rising at the flies, as they sailed round and round under the shadow of the great oak, where the beetles fell flop into the water, and the green caterpillars let themselves down from the boughs by silk ropes for no reason at all; and then changed their foolish minds for no reason at all, either; and hauled themselves ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... worked mechanically, shredding the flesh into long strips, he watched the lower trail. Ten days had gone by since he had fled across the Valley, but the danger of pursuit had not passed and, as he saw a great owl that was nesting down below rise up blindly and flop away he paused ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... Flop! A large segment of the cream blanc-mange had disintegrated itself from the fast-melting mass, and, evading William's encircling arm, had fallen on to the floor at his feet. With praiseworthy presence of mind William promptly stepped ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... heavy flop of the side Cloister door as it closed behind them, and then silence once more and the thin angry voice of Canon Foster, "Let ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... quite absorbed in an article by one of our most noted masters of literature. I drew one of the queer high-backed chairs scattered about the room, towards the table, and sat down to enjoy a "feast of reason and a flow of soul." As I turned the mildewed page, something suddenly fell with a dull "flop" upon the paper. It was a drop of blood! I stared at it with a strange sensation of mingled horror and astonishment. Could it have been upon the page before I turned it? No; it was wet and bright, and presented the uneven, broken disc which drops of liquid always possess ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... striking back. Other women's outbreaks had bored him and generally had ended his interest in them—this one was more charming than ever. He liked, too, her American pluck and savage independence. Jealous she certainly was, but there was no whine about it; nor was there any flop at the close—floppy women he detested—had always done so. Lucy struck straight out from her shoulder and ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... thing achieved; it has its rightful place, as well as any autocart that ever ran a race. The farmer, in the coming years, when eggs to town he brings, will flop along above the trees, upon his rusty wings. The doctor, when he has a call, from patients far or near, will quickly strap his pinions on, and hit the atmosphere. And airship racing then will be ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... remember about the poem which dealt with proving your soul?—how you spouted it. I know that you are gifted, child, but the world doesn't. If we fail, you at least can, after you pay proper respects to my remains, go back to that adorable aunt of yours and flop in the lap of luxury—but make the attempt ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... is just like brick-dust enlivened by half-boiled cauliflowers! Never mind, it will be all the better background. Now, I saw a majestic lady reposing somewhere. There, let her sit against it. Oh, she mustn't flop over. Here, that match-box, is it? I pity the person deluded enough to use it! Prop her up with it. Now then, let us have a presentation of ladies-she's a governor's wife in the colonies, you see. Never mind costumes, they may be queer. All that will stand or ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... not swim, and he began to flop about in the wildest and most unreasonable manner. I threw him a board, but he did not seem to have sense enough to grasp it. I saw that he would be drowned in a moment more, unless he received more efficient help. I ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... like folks!" she said, holding it off and looking at it in high derision. "Look at that thing, Miss Gibbie, peart as the first crocus and proud as cuffy when the weather was good, and at the first touch of dampness or discouragement flop it goes, and no more spirit than a convict in court! It certainly is strange how many things in nature is like human beings. Now this here rooster and this here duck"—she smoothed the breast and ran her fingers down the feathers—"just naturally had no use for each other. If fowls could do what ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... The flap-flop of the horse's hoofs died on Winterbottom Road, and no sound came but the wind sighing in old apple-boughs, and from somewhere the melancholy creaking of a swinging shutter. The gate-way was grown about with grass; Ken crushed it as he forced open the gate, and the ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... fuff the creature sprang down the shrouds on the opposite side as if it had been born and bred a sailor. Unfortunately it made a wild leap at a pendant rope in passing, missed it, and came down on the deck with a prodigious flop. Only one of its nine lives, apparently, was damaged. With the other eight it rushed to the opening in the bow, and soon gained the shore, where it immediately sprang to the leafy head of a cocoa-nut palm. At the same moment a black-and-white cat was sent flying in the same direction ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... trouble is to char-ac-ter what a peg'll be to a creepin' vine—something to which the vine'll 'ook on and pull itself up by. Where there's nothink to ketch on to the vine'll grow; but it'll grow in a 'eap of flop." There was a tremor in his tone as he summed up. "That's ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... giving each other a dry bath in the shape of a shower of sand. There was a monotonous clank of chains, and an occasional deep abdominal rumble like distant thunder. All over the camp there was a confused subdued medley of sound. A hum from the argumentative villagers, a lazy flop in the tank as a raho rose to the surface, an occasional outburst from the ducks, an angry clamour from the water-hens and blue-fowl. My dogs were lying round me blinking and winking, and making an occasional futile snap ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... but some carrion crows moving around in the blue without flop of a wing," he grumbled. "Who started the dope that mankind is the chosen of the Lord? Huh! we have to scratch gravel for all we rake in but the birds of the air have us beat for desert travel all ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... the tree top, When the shell comes the runners all flop, When the shell busts, good-bye to our station, We're up in ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... flight of flies or counting the warder's steps along the passage with particular attention to variations of tread and so on. But as it is, I'm like an insect that's flown into a room of its own accord. I dash against the walls, dash against the windows, flop against the ceiling, do everything on God's earth, in fact, except fly out again. And all the while I'm thinking, like that moth, or that butterfly, or whatever it is, 'The shortness of life! The shortness of life!' I've only one night or one day, ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... big, flop-branched tree, with the great supports like stays. I remember it as well as can be. Off to the right, sir, and in a quarter of an hour we shall be ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... was nevertheless a cunning one. Several jurors expressed their appreciation of his sympathy and one answered: "Tired o' talkin'! Wall, I reckon so. I'm jes' tireder an' dryer 'n if I'd been tailin' down beef steers all day. My ol' tongue's been a-floppin' till thar ain't nary 'nother flop left in her 'nless I could git to ile her up with a swaller o' red-eye, an—" regretfully—"I reckon thar ain't no sort ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... crossed with tame ones. They were the cutest, most knowing things. I kept them at the house until they were able to care for themselves, then I turned them out mornings. I would go in the pasture and say, "Is that you nice gooses?" They would act so human, be so tickled to see me and flop against me and squawk. When Mr. Fitzgerald came home they would run for him the same way as soon as they saw the horse. They were ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... boys have seen a mother quail flop and flutter and play wounded, to lead the dangerous boy away from her brood of little quail mites, and work the ruse so daringly and successfully as to save both her babies and herself. I well remember my surprise and admiration ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... blowing, was he?" he said with a hard laugh, "the damn—darned fool!" he corrected, remembering Ophelia at his side. "Well, 'egg' him on—the higher he flies the worse he'll flop ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... No, they will pass on, passing, chafing against the low rocks, swirling, passing. Better get this job over quick. Listen: a fourworded wavespeech: seesoo, hrss, rsseeiss, ooos. Vehement breath of waters amid seasnakes, rearing horses, rocks. In cups of rocks it slops: flop, slop, slap: bounded in barrels. And, spent, its speech ceases. It flows purling, widely flowing, floating ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... his head, and the fly fell with a flop in the middle of the pool. He waited a breathless instant while Jock, Sandy, and Jean watched the fly with him, and then, as nothing happened, he cast again. When several such attempts brought no result, he said, "You're sure they ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... farewell to Russian hospitality, and, relinquishing all prospects of wearing the Muscovite diadem, returned to Paris and Dujarier. Her lover's influence secured her an engagement in La Biche au Bois at the Porte St. Martin Theatre; but, as had happened at the Academie Royale, she was a "flop." The critics said so with no uncertain voice; and the manager announced that he agreed with them. Clearly, then, the ballet was ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... to hear you have been doing your influenza also. It's a beastly thing, as I have it, no symptoms except going flop. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... anything—and I believe him. Why, I've seen him set Dan'l Webster down here on this floor—Dan'l Webster was the name of the frog—and sing out, 'Flies, Dan'l, flies!' and quicker'n you could wink he'd spring straight up and snake a fly off'n the counter there, and flop down on the floor ag'in as solid as a gob of mud, and fall to scratching the side of his head with his hind foot as indifferent as if he hadn't no idea he'd been doin' any more'n any frog might do. You never see a frog so modest and straightfor'ard ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... require any of your argument, you flop-eared son of a tramp with half a tail," replied The O'Shannon. "You come and take it, if you think you ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... of what there is flitting here to see, The waked birds preen and the seals flop lazily, Soon you will have, Dear, to vanish from me, For the stars close their shutters and the Dawn whitens hazily. Trust me, I mind not, though Life lours The bringing me here; nay, bring me here again! I am just the same ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... prolonged shock of earthquake came. It was not a bump like the previous one, but a severe vibration which only served to shake the men in their chairs, but it shook the small monkey off the rafter, and the miserable little thing fell with a shriek and a flop into the rice-dish! ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... did the loop himself, hardly conscious of Bland's presence. Bland turned his head, signalling, and did a flop, righted, and was flying straight in the opposite direction. Again, and flew southeast by the sun. They practised that manoeuver again and again before Johnny felt fairly sure of himself, but once he did it he was one proud ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... ort 'o jes' to-day Git down and roll and waller, don't you know, In that-air stubble, and flop up and crow, Seein' sich craps! I'll undertake to say There're no wheat's ever turned out thataway Afore this season!—Folks is keerless tho', And too fergitful—'caze we'd ort 'o show More thankfulness!—Jes' looky hyonder, hey?— And watch that little reaper ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... because I saw him flop over," replied the other; "and that yelp meant sudden pain, as sure as it stood for anything. But he managed to get off, though possibly he will fall within ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... was too large to be Duke, Penrod's little old dog, and, besides, Duke wouldn't act like that. It crept rapidly out into the upper hall, and then, as she recovered the use of her voice and began to scream, the animated cape abandoned its creeping for a quicker gait—"a weird, heaving flop," she ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... reverberating chuckle. "Bless you! I'm as nimble as a sixpence. By the way I'll show you the advantage of having a bit of whalebone in one's composition;" and with these words the Whale curled himself up, then flattened out suddenly with a tremendous flop, and, shooting through the air like a flying elephant, disappeared with a great splash in ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... the old doorman with his look of sea dog recognized her, admitting her with a nod. The titter of music came back through the wings and quick, loud thumps of a tumbling act in progress. The smell of grease paint, like the flop of a cold, wet hand to her face, smote her with a familiarity out of all proportion to her limited ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... to be dragged out of the stern of the skiff, struggle to clasp his writhing legs about the pushpole that stood at an oblique angle, caught firmly in the tenacious mud, and then releasing his hold, flop with a great splash into the dark-colored water ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... "and the nigger outrode Grogan, if anybody should ask you. He had a chance—if he hadn't let that horse's head flop to go ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... this time wasted, and now to find ourselves farther back than when we started. I could cry!" protested Elsie dolefully; and Maud gave a little flop ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... unaware by the onslaught. When he started to run Stopper was already passing him, turning sharply to the right again so that the rope raked the horse's front legs. Two jumps and Stopper had stopped, faced the horse and stood braced again, his ears perked knowingly while he waited for the flop. ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... patted his back. That was the price he had always to pay for bread or butter or jam. Finally, she gave him the bread and let him go. Down the back steps he came, running eagerly and calling Frank. Once more in the kitchen began the flop of the churn, once more rose the wail ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... the very act of cultivating his consciousness. It was in the course of another minute the most extraordinary thing in the world: everything had altered, dropped, darkened, disappeared; his imagination had spread its wings only to feel them flop all grotesquely at its sides as he recognised in his hostess's quiet companion, the oppressive alien who hadn't indeed interfered with his fanciful flight, though she had prevented his immediate declaration ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... that thousand cannot readjust their nerves to the prospect of a violent end by powder and ball from unseen sources. Under other circumstances any one of the five might face a peril greater than that which now confronts him. Conceivably he might flop into a swollen river to save a drowning puppy; might dive into a burning building after some stranger's pet tabby cat. But this prospect which lies before him of ambling across a field with death singing about his ears, is a thing which tears with clawing fingers at the tuggs ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... this life. This is perfectly true, therefore the object of all religion (not religiousness), mental training and development should be the building of character. A religion that does not build up character is worthless. Those who think that they can "flop" through life, avoid, as far as possible, its discipline, make no effort to improve their character, and through believing in a certain creed can miraculously become perfect, simply by dying, are deceiving themselves. ...
— Within You is the Power • Henry Thomas Hamblin
... bite me," Peggy returned confidently. "He knows I'm his friend, don't you, poor old fellow?" Hobo, realizing that the loved voice was addressing him, even though the trend of the question was beyond his comprehension, gave a feeble flop of his tail, and raised to Peggy's face eyes full ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... had a certain element of mystery. In a flash unsensational ponderings were displaced by a picture of a steamer in distress far away. Had I not on a similar occasion of a secret-disclosing tide heard through seven miles of insulted and sullen air the flop of an inch or so of dynamite exploded by a heartless barbarian for the illicit destruction of vivacious fish? Had I not listened with amazement to the buzz of a steamer's propeller and the throb of her engines six miles away when unaccustomed "nigger-heads" of coral showed yellow in the ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... that morning, through having had a fright in the night, and being woke up by old Shoutnight the owl, who had been out mousing and lost his wife, and sat at last in the ivy-tod halloaing and hoo-hooing, till the gardener's wife threw her husband's old boot out of the window at him, when he went flop into the laurel bush, and banged and bounced about, hissing and snapping with his great bill, while his goggle eyes glowed so angrily that the blackbird's good lady popped off her nest in a hurry and broke one of her eggs, and, what was worse, was afraid to ...
— Featherland - How the Birds lived at Greenlawn • George Manville Fenn
... well recoil. A plank, by way of flying drawbridge, joined it to the shore. And it was a dreary moment for Jimson when he pulled this after him and found himself alone on this unwholesome fortress. He could hear the rats scuttle and flop in the abhorred interior; the key cried among the wards like a thing in pain; the sitting-room was deep in dust, and smelt strong of bilge-water. It could not be called a cheerful spot, even for a composer absorbed in beloved toil; how much less for a young gentleman haunted by alarms and awaiting ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... at all, William. I have an excellent memory for figures. Four thousand, three hundred and fifteen. Ah-h! See how instinct inspires him to flop always toward the water! Did ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... moment a loud flop was heard on the quarter-deck. It was the forgotten mermaid, who, emerging from her stateroom, and ascending the companion-way at that moment, had fainted at the spectacle. The Pirate Prodigy rushed to her side ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... until the cub had stretched himself out comfortably in a crotch did Miki express himself. Then he gave an incredulous yelp, sniffed at the butt of the tree, and made a half-hearted experiment at the thing himself. One flop on his back convinced him that Neewa was the tree-climber of the partnership. Chagrined, he wandered back fifteen or twenty feet and sat down to study the situation. He could not perceive that Neewa had any special business up the tree. Certainly he was not hunting for bugs. He yelped ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... strive to escape the regulars; But the majority seek for the standardized premier faces That really mean so little in the life of the play. Listen to the comments during intermission: "It doesn't get over!" "It's a flop!" "What atmosphere!" "An absolute steal!" "Such originality!" "Not a bit life-like!" "That author has a wonderful memory!" "He copped that lyric from Irving Berlin!" "He's as funny as a crutch or a cry ...
— The Broadway Anthology • Edward L. Bernays, Samuel Hoffenstein, Walter J. Kingsley, Murdock Pemberton
... hunting-shirt, intending to use it as the toreador uses his mantle, to entangle the dangerous weapons of his adversary. Then he dragged himself across to the other end of the ledge and attempted to corner the captive. For this he was not quite quick enough, however. With a flop and a squawk the bird eluded him, and he realized that he had better postpone the undertaking till the morrow. Crawling back to his hollow by the bush, he sank down, utterly exhausted. Not till the sharp ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... abandon jealousy, forsake taking of tobacco, and cease to wear their beards so rudely long. Oh, to have a husband with a mouth continually smoking, with a bush of furs on the ridge of his chin, readie still to flop into his foaming chops, 'tis more than most intolerable;" and similar indications of dislike to smoking could ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... permanently lame. It was the whole man who limped and lurched, with nothing of him left in the same position as before. The tremendous cleverness, the literary society, the political ambition, the Bournemouth sisters all seemed to flop with his every movement a little nearer to the floor. I hadn't had an Oxford training and I had never encountered the great man at whose feet poor Dawling had most submissively sat and who had addressed him his most destructive sniffs; but ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... wouldn't have hurt you. None of these flop-over Janes for me!... An' I'll give you a hunch, Pretty Eyes. You might have run acrost a fellar thet was ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... the work of the office as, whenever the Assistant-Resident turned to any employee to ask how far such and such a place might be distant, or the tariff of carriages, etc., the person so addressed, no matter how engaged, would, before reply, immediately flop on to his knees. The Regent was also calling on the representative of the Government, and to him the Englishman was introduced. This native functionary was fat and well-looking, but did not seem to exactly ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser
... no shame to fight the lame When they deserve to cop it. So do not try to pipe your eye, Or with my flip I'll flop it.' ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... thunderstorm. So wrapped in cotton wool is a now-a-days Commander-in-Chief that this was the first musketry fire I could claim to have come under since the beginning of the war. To sit in a trench and hear flights of bullets flop into the sandbag parapet, or pass harmlessly overhead, is hardly to be under fire. An irregular stream of Irishmen were walking up the path along with us; one of them was hit just ahead of me. He caught it in the thigh and stretcher men ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... high-strung even about his play, as when, Mr. Mackail tells us, "he would imitate an eagle with considerable skill and humour, climbing on to a chair and, after a sullen pause, coming down with a soft, heavy flop." It seems odd that Mr. John Burns could say of this sensitive and capricious man of genius, as we find him saying in Mr. Compton-Rickett's book, that "William Morris was a chunk of humanity in the rough; he was a piece of good, ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... night, it seemed suddenly to put on brakes. According to the radar, its original speed was close to mach 3, thirty-nine miles a minute. Then it checked swiftly. It came to a complete stop. Then it hurtled backward along the line it had followed. It wabbled momentarily as if it had done a flip-flop four miles above the ground. It dived. It stopped dead in mid-air for a full second and abruptly began to rise once more in an insane, corkscrew course which ended abruptly in a headlong fall toward ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster
... sure," said Rendel. "I am not sure that it is quite an easy thing to have an ardent hold on life. Some people keep letting it down with a flop. But I feel as if I could hold it tight this morning at any rate. I do not believe there is a creature in the wide world that I would change places with at this moment," he went on, the force of his ardent hope and purpose breaking ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... that on earth do dwell,'—the dear homely Old Hundredth. It was no wonder that a light, very light, footstep on the gravel outside did not rouse me. The door behind me opened, and Tinker turned his head lazily, and his tail began to flop heavier against the floor. The next moment two soft ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... not go too far. One may regret Adam, and his extinction may start fissures in many genealogical trees, but to such of us as only "came over in the Mayflower," or "with the Conqueror," his flop into oblivion may entail no serious damage to existing rights. Upon Moses I always looked as a person of doubtful parentage, and a leader who, had he lived in recent centuries, would have been sacrificed by his own men within a month at most. His only title to fame is that he ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... He dropped his chin into his chest with a recumbent bow, and his arm described an impressive semicircle. "Present to her 'surances my most disting'shed consider-ration—soon's you find her," and he went flop on his side ...
— A Good Samaritan • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... allowed me to put my hand under him and lift him gently out! Suddenly it occurred to me that I might paint him! The palette chanced to be at hand, so I began at once. In about two minutes the paddle gave a flop of discomfort as he lay on the rock; I therefore put him into a small pool for a minute or so to let him, breathe, then took him out and had a second sitting, after which he had another rest and a little refreshment in the pool. Thus in about ten minutes, I had his portrait, and put him back into ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... anchor flop overboard," she announced, springing up from a deck chair. "I think I shall accompany you, ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... are risks which the would-be young can and should avoid. Surely Miss Wilcox ought to have known better than to flop down on the grass with an effort and a bump, clasping (with some difficulty) her knees because Vera, who is sixteen, slim and lithe, with the gawky grace of a young colt, had made such an ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... down this street and see what it runs into," suggested Tessie. "Hope it doesn't flop off ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... flickered and went out. In the blackness which followed, each stage of the Phoenix's descent could be heard as clearly as cannon shots: the twanging and snapping as it tumbled through the wires, a drawn-out squawk and the flop of wings in the air below, the crash into the hedge, the jarring thud against the ground. Broken wires began to sputter ominously and fire out sparks. A smell of singed feathers and ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd
... during the forenoon a shoal of flying-fish rose out of the water alongside, and passed directly over the raft, nearly a score being intercepted in their flight by our sail, and caught before they were able to flop off into the water again. I thought that any attempt to preserve them would be sure to end in failure by their quickly becoming unfit for human food, and therefore proposed that they should be at once eaten, ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... behind—making a beast of a row. Shouting wasn't any earthly. So I rushed in and grabbed him. 'Verney—drop it! What are you doing?' I said sternly; and he looked up at me like a sainted cherub. 'Flop, don't hinder me. I'm walkin' froo the valley of the shadow, an' goodness an' mercy are following me all the days of my life.' That's the fruits of teaching ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... that point, however, gravity, which he had successfully defied, wreaked vengeance upon him; it suddenly reached forth and made him its vindictive toy. He pawed, he fought, he appeared to be climbing an invisible rope. With a mighty flop he landed flat upon his back, uttering a loud and dismayed grunt as his breath left him. When he had dug himself out he found that the girl, too, was breathless. She was rocking in silent ecstasy, she hugged herself gleefully, and there ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... looking for the chickens. At least all of them but Polly would. Polly always took the part of old Buzzard, so she could flop down in Dilsy's seat, although she knew she would have ...
— That Old-Time Child, Roberta • Sophie Fox Sea
... a long-winded lot, is BUCHANAN, slops over tremenjous, he do; Kinder poet, dear boy, I believe, and they always do flop round a few, Make a rare lot o' splash and no progress, like ducks in a tub, dontcher know, But cackle and splutter ain't swimming; so ROBERT, my nabs, it's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various
... held me while I skinned. It was very awkward. The tiny landscape almost directly beneath us was blue with the atmosphere of distance. A solitary raven discovered us, and began to circle and croak and flop. ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... the bulwarks let the stream from the hose flop overboard, where it ran out into a stream of bubbles ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... will marry, makes the spirited reply—"Faith, kind uncle, when men abandon jealousy, forsake taking of tobacco, and cease to wear their beards so rudely long. Oh, to have a husband with a mouth continually smoking, with a bush of furs on the ridge of his chin, readie still to flop into his foaming chops, 'tis more than most intolerable;" and similar indications of dislike to smoking could be quoted from ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... to bear. His hair was always brushed straight up, his eyes were always very wide open,—and he usually carried a big letter-book with him, keeping in it a certain place with his finger. This book was almost too much for his strength, and he would flop it down, now on this man's desk and now on that man's, and in along career of such floppings had made himself to be very much hated. On the score of some old grudge he and Mr Love did not speak to each other; and for this reason, on all occasions ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... an intending occupant might well recoil. A plank, by way of flying drawbridge, joined it to the shore. And it was a dreary moment for Jimson when he pulled this after him and found himself alone on this unwholesome fortress. He could hear the rats scuttle and flop in the abhorred interior; the key cried among the wards like a thing in pain; the sitting-room was deep in dust, and smelt strong of bilge-water. It could not be called a cheerful spot, even for a composer absorbed in beloved toil; how much less for a young gentleman ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not one of the hundred sounds which make night hideous in the city. What bliss to lie there, hour after hour, in a delicious half-waking, half-sleeping, wholly exquisite stupor, only rousing myself to swallow egg-nogg No. 426, and then to flop back again on the ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... run the action of the drug had ceased. It was the business of a minute fraction of a second. The effect of the New Accelerator passed like the drawing of a curtain, vanished in the movement of a hand. I heard Gibberne's voice in infinite alarm. "Sit down," he said, and flop, down upon the turf at the edge of the Leas I sat—scorching as I sat. There is a patch of burnt grass there still where I sat down. The whole stagnation seemed to wake up as I did so, the disarticulated vibration of the band rushed together into a blast of music, the promenaders ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... it is! I say I saw the Devil himself fly off Drachenfels, and flop into Cologne. Fritz here, and Frankenbauch, saw him too. They'll swear to him: so 'll I. Hell's thunder! will we. Yonder fellows will have it 'twas a flash o' lightning, as if I didn't see him, horns, tail, and claws, and a mighty sight 'twas, as ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... seem to get time to write a real letter. All hands, including your husband, are so dead tired when off watch that there is nothing to do but flop down on your bunk—or on the deck sometimes—and sleep. The captain and I take watch on the bridge day and night, and outside of this I do my own navigating and other duties, so time does not go a-begging with me. However, we are still unsunk, ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... did," said Sue sleepily to Bunny when they were talking about this, as they lay close to the big dog in their blankets, "even if any fish did flop up, Bunny, Splash would catch ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Camp Rest-A-While • Laura Lee Hope
... from Harry's bolster; and then at it went Harry and Phil—the latter being armed with a pillow, down whose front a ghastly slit soon showed itself; but Philip fought well, and Harry was getting worsted and driven into the corner amongst the boots, where the footing was rather bad for bare feet "Flop!" Harry caught it then and staggered back. "Flop" again, for Philip was surpassing himself, and Harry having received the last blow full upon the top of his head went down upon one knee; but he rallied ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... the tattered soldier continued to talk. "Besides, if I died, I wouldn't die th' way that feller did. That was th' funniest thing. I'd jest flop down, I would. I never seen a feller die ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... to watch the bannock bake — how restful is the air! You'd little think that we were somewhere north of Sixty-three, Though where I don't exactly know, and don't precisely care. The man-size mountains palisade us round on every side; The river is a-flop with fish, and ripples silver-clear; The midnight sunshine brims yon cleft — we think it's the Divide; We'll get there in a month, maybe, or maybe in ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... taken unaware by the onslaught. When he started to run Stopper was already passing him, turning sharply to the right again so that the rope raked the horse's front legs. Two jumps and Stopper had stopped, faced the horse and stood braced again, his ears perked knowingly while he waited for the flop. ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... River and hunting outlets some more, took our time. Ran across geese this A.M. I went ashore and George and Wallace chased them close by. Shot leader with rifle. Then two young ones head close in shore. I killed one with pistol and two others started to flop away on top of water. Missed one with pistol, and killed other. While exploring a bay to N.W., we landed to climb ridge. George found three partridges. I shot one, wounded another, pistol. Camped to- night cheerful but desperate. All firm for progress ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... know what he's doing with the curling iron, but I think—wait a minute till I can speak—oh, oh, oh—I think he tripped over the apron while he was trying to flop an omelet and the omelet came down on his head. Don't speak ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... retrogression, retrograduation[obs3], retroaction; reculade[obs3]; retreat, withdrawal, retirement, remigration[obs3]; recession &c. (motion from) 287; recess; crab-like motion. refluence[obs3], reflux; backwater, regurgitation, ebb, return; resilience reflection, reflexion (recoil) 277[Brit]; flip-flop, volte- face[Fr]. counter motion, retrograde motion, backward movement, motion in reverse, counter movement, counter march; veering, tergiversation, recidivation|, backsliding, fall; deterioration &c. 659; recidivism, recidivity[obs3]. reversal, relapse, turning point &c.(reversion) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... put on brakes. According to the radar, its original speed was close to mach 3, thirty-nine miles a minute. Then it checked swiftly. It came to a complete stop. Then it hurtled backward along the line it had followed. It wabbled momentarily as if it had done a flip-flop four miles above the ground. It dived. It stopped dead in mid-air for a full second and abruptly began to rise once more in an insane, corkscrew course which ended abruptly in a ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster
... watch the anchor flop overboard," she announced, springing up from a deck chair. "I think I shall accompany ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... unclose. But what slippery stalks they had. Aunt Emma held Milly, and father held Olly, while they dived their hands under the water and pulled hard. And some of the lilies came out with such short bits of stalk you could scarcely hold them, and sometimes, flop! out came a long green stalk, like a long green snake curling and twisting about in the boat. The children dabbled, and splashed, and pulled, to their hearts' content, till at last Mr. Norton told them they had got enough and now they must sit ...
— Milly and Olly • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Heman Fitts knocks the ball over into Aunt Dorcas Eastman's yard, and Aunt Dorcas comes out an' picks up the ball an' takes it into the house, an' we have to stop playin'. Then Phineas Owen allows he can flop any boy in Belchertown, an' Moses Baker takes him up, an' they wrassle like two tartars, till at last Moses tuckers Phineas out an' downs him ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... and thrown back into the water, to survive or die as the water-fates should will. It turned on one side, revealing its white belly and torn gills; then, feeling itself washed ashore by the eddy, it gave one more feeble flop in the effort to regain the safe deeps. At this moment the raccoon, pouncing with a light splash into the shallows, seized it, and with a nip through the ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... necessary to keep the masses from sinking. A man who really thinks, will think his way into light. He may turn many a somersault, but he will come right side up at last. But people in general do not think, and if they refuse to be walled in by other people's thoughts, they inevitably flop and flounder into pitiable prostration. So important is it, that a poor creed is better than none at all. Truth, even adulterated as we get it, is a tonic. Bring forward something tangible, something positive, something that means something, and it will do. But this flowery, misty, dreamy ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... their dresses, the heavy flop of the side Cloister door as it closed behind them, and then silence once more and the thin angry voice of Canon ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... and thrust them away from her so that they went sliding one after the other on to the floor. For some long-drawn moments there was no sound in the room but the slowly accelerated slide and flop of one sheet ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... said. "I reckon ez how that settles it. Old Eph Yeates'll share fair, powder and lead, parched corn and pan-meat with the man that can flop him that-away. Whilst ye're a-needing a friend in the big woods—a raw-meat-eating Injun-skinner that can jest or'narily whop his weight in wildcats—why, old Eph's your man; from now on, if not sooner." And in this wise began an alliance the like of which, for true-blue loyalty on this ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... Parkmaze Pool. I was a-bearing across towards Bloom's End, and lo and behold, there was a man just brought out o' the Pool, dead; he had un'rayed for a dip, but not being able to pitch it just there had gone in flop over his head. Men looked at en; women looked at en; children looked at en; nobody knowed en. He was covered wi' a sheet; but I catched sight of his voot, just showing out as they carried en along. 'I don't care what name that ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... "Flop!" went the fish, and Snoop awakened with a jump. Up to her feet she leaped like a flash, and then she saw the fish. Snoop was very fond of fish, and made a spring for the one Bert had caught. But the fish was wet ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on a Houseboat • Laura Lee Hope
... advantageous position, it was necessary to shoot with extreme accuracy. A bullet directly through the back of the head would kill cleanly. A hit anywhere else was practically useless, for even in death the animals seemed to retain enough blind instinctive vitality to flop them into the water. There they ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... and the harness in the other, you single out the cur you are after, make proper advances, and when he comes sniffling and snuffling and all the time keeping at a safe distance, you drop the sheet-iron on the snow, the brute makes a dive, and you make a flop, you grab the nearest thing grabable—ear, leg, or bunch of hair—and do your best to catch his throat, after which, everything is easy. Slip the harness over the head, push the fore-paws through, and there you are, one dog hooked up and harnessed. After licking the bites and sucking the blood, ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson
... tread, characterised by the emphasis and deliberation of age, descending by the narrow staircase from above; and, what made the sound more singular, it was plain that the feet which produced it were perfectly bare, measuring the descent with something between a pound and a flop, very ugly ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... he had run flop into the arms of Mrs Stratton, who was carrying in her hands a small basket of ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... got to think about it any more, thank goodness," Jane exclaimed, rising from the grass and laying a hand on the bag. "Let's put an end to the whole thing now and go home. Take a holt of the other end, and we'll flop it in." ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... sixpence. By the way I'll show you the advantage of having a bit of whalebone in one's composition;" and with these words the Whale curled himself up, then flattened out suddenly with a tremendous flop, and, shooting through the air like a flying elephant, disappeared with a ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... certain element of mystery. In a flash unsensational ponderings were displaced by a picture of a steamer in distress far away. Had I not on a similar occasion of a secret-disclosing tide heard through seven miles of insulted and sullen air the flop of an inch or so of dynamite exploded by a heartless barbarian for the illicit destruction of vivacious fish? Had I not listened with amazement to the buzz of a steamer's propeller and the throb of her engines ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... boy at the tiller. "Fred groans every time I put a worm on the hook, and squeals when the fish flop round in the bottom of the boat, especially if they come anywhere near ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... table, where it spread itself like a small, irregular pond. At once the workman in charge took up a steel bar not unlike a metal yardstick and began pressing down the mass to a uniform thickness. This done he ran the bar deftly beneath and turned the vast piece over just as one would flop over some gigantic griddle-cake. He continued to change it from side to side, pressing it down in any spot where it was too thick, but never once touching it with his hands. He then cut off a long ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... telegram. It was a pitchy black night, as stifling as a June night can be, and the loo, the red-hot wind from the westward, was booming among the tinder-dry trees and pretending that the rain was on its heels. Now and again a spot of almost boiling water would fall on the dust with the flop of a frog, but all our weary world knew that was only pretence. It was a shade cooler in the press-room than the office, so I sat there, while the type ticked and clicked, and the night-jars hooted at the windows, and ...
— The Man Who Would Be King • Rudyard Kipling
... that Martin was almost lifted off the ground. He screamed and gave a jump; but it was nothing to the jump the ostrich gave when he discovered that the button belonged to a living boy. He jumped six feet high into the air and came down with a great flop; then feeling rather ashamed of himself for being frightened at such an insignificant thing as Martin, he stalked majestically away, glancing back, first over one shoulder then the other, and kicking up his heels behind him in ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... catch, but when his hoss set back the rope busted plumb in two. Now, Shorty, he had an idea that he could ease the work of his hoss a whole pile if he laid holts on the rope whenever his hoss set down to flop a cow. So Shorty, he had holt on this rope and was pulling back hard when the rope busted, and Shorty, he spilled backwards out'n that saddle like ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... and he began to flop about in the wildest and most unreasonable manner. I threw him a board, but he did not seem to have sense enough to grasp it. I saw that he would be drowned in a moment more, unless he received more efficient help. I was fearfully alarmed for his safety; and, though ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... rapidly away, leaving her parasol, which she had again thrust into the ground, flopping in the breeze which had just sprung up, and each flop seemed to mock the discomfited Tom, who, greatly astonished but not at all out of conceit with himself, sat staring blankly after her, and with her head and shoulders more erect than usual, if possible, she went on almost upon a run until ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... before a shower came on; but somehow he never could manage it. He liked most, though, to see them rising at the flies, as they sailed round and round under the shadow of the great oak, where the beetles fell flop into the water, and the green caterpillars let themselves down from the boughs by silk ropes for no reason at all; and then changed their foolish minds for no reason at all, either; and hauled themselves up again into the tree, rolling up the rope ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... and trousers, his collar open, and his sleeves rolled right up to his shoulders. "Hooray!" he cried; and forgetting all his dignity as second officer in command of Her Majesty's ship, he indulged in a kind of triumphal dance, which ended with a flop, caused by his bringing one foot down ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... get down on your faces—flop!" broke in the leader of the ruffians. "That's what ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... cotton with only its queer little wizened face and blue eyes visible it had a startling resemblance to a human baby until its long tail would suddenly flop into sight and dispel the illusion. It lived only four days in spite of ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... to a stump of willow, caught up a stick lying on the bank with the other, and, hanging over the stream, tried to head back the truant. All that happened was that her foot slipping on a pebble went flop into the shallow water, and part of her dress ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... as his friend fired and saw the Indian flop down and crawl aimlessly about on hands and knees. "What's he ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... make the fortune of the play, and it would give Godolphin a chance to show his noble frame in something like the majesty of nature. Godolphin would like nothing better. We could have Atland rescue Salome, and Godolphin could flop round among the canvas breakers for ten minutes, and come on for a recall with the heroine, both dripping real water all ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... know we're off, an' once we're tied up at the dock and we hear Mac's been talkin' we'll just spread the word that he was so soused he jumped overboard an' swum ashore without waitin' to see if we could back off. Lordy, Gib, don't work me to death. I'm that weary I could flop on this wet deck an' be off to sleep in ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... point, though," persisted Phillida, who was a zealous convert. "The dances are to make you graceful always. You so get into the poetry of motion that it's quite impossible for you ever to flop again!" ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... massive, heavily braced, and well upholstered. It had to be; Mike the Angel liked to flop into chairs, and his two hundred and sixty pounds gave chairs a lot ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... hotcakes with a vicious flop that spattered more batter on the stove. He had been a father only a month or so, but that was long enough to learn many things about babies which he had never known before. He knew, for instance, that the ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... corner after Chappell made one cap. To make matters more binding, I came up and lost $1,200. Then the ball opened, and it was not more than half and hour before we had downed the party. Then the devil was to pay. One of the party said: "Look here; I must have my money back, or h—l will flop around here mighty quick." Then they all joined in and made a big kick; and as I saw fun brewing, I slipped into the baggage-car, changed hats and coats with the baggage-master, got his badge and my double-barrelled shotgun. Then I rushed ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... it hung down its pendant head, that aunt had at all events allayed its stiffness. He desired aunt to rise also, but I felt by her throbbing cunt, and the pressure she put on my prick, as she rose from it, so that it came out with a loud flop, that she would fain once more have done me the service of allaying any stiffness that might re-arise. However, it was much limper than before, although still of a goodly thickness. When she got on her legs, she stooped forward, kissed it, took it in her mouth, and most lovingly ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... can supply the wants of His creatures, even in such a situation as ours; for during the forenoon a shoal of flying-fish rose out of the water alongside, and passed directly over the raft, nearly a score being intercepted in their flight by our sail, and caught before they were able to flop off into the water again. I thought that any attempt to preserve them would be sure to end in failure by their quickly becoming unfit for human food, and therefore proposed that they should be at once eaten, which proposition, I need scarcely say, met with ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... A peremptory order to halt, coupled with a threat to fire, rang out sharply—and Jimmie Dale flung himself flat in the bottom of the boat. The wharf edge seemed to open in little, crackling jets of flame, came the roar of reports like a miniature battery in action, then the FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, as the lead tore up the water around him, the duller thud as a bullet buried its nose in the boat's side, and the curious rip and squeak as a splinter flew. Then Mittel's voice, high-pitched, as though ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... don't be a tightwad. Swell car—poor man with no eats, not even a two-bits flop for tonight. Could yuh loosen up and slip ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... and the audience gets time to take in the situation. They say, chuckling to themselves, 'that villain's got his dose at last, and serve him right too.' They want to enjoy his struggles, while the heroine stands grimly at the door taking care that he doesn't get away. Then when my fist comes down flop on the stage and they realise that I am indeed done for, the yell of triumph that goes up is something delicious ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... dipping paddles made no noise, though sometimes there was a gurgle, as though a fish had broken the water behind them; sometimes, in the shining pools ahead, she saw the trout leap out. At every startling flop Delphin would exclaim: "Un gros!" From an upper branch of a spruce a kingfisher darted like an arrow into the water, making a splash like a falling stone. Once, after they had passed through the breach of a beaver dam, Herve nodded his ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... a feller'd ort 'o jes' to-day Git down and roll and waller, don't you know, In that-air stubble, and flop up and crow, Seein' sich craps! I'll undertake to say There're no wheat's ever turned out thataway Afore this season!—Folks is keerless tho', And too fergitful—'caze we'd ort 'o show More thankfulness!—Jes' looky hyonder, hey?— And watch that little reaper wadin' ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... evolution into bathers who would be drownable, and translation into unaccustomed situations—with the peril of a week's notice. Wherefore let the seal perpetuate his race—his obstacle race, as one might say, seeing him flounder and flop. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... already." His voice was dryly sarcastic. "It's too bad you rode this far for nothing; can't even get a look at me. But it's no time to visit a man, anyway. You and your boys flop outside. We'll swap palaver in the morning. ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... Every turkey contrived to get a tree or bush between him and me, just at the critical instant. In despair I tried to hold on the last one, got a bead on it through my peep sight, moved it with him as we moved, and holding tight, I fired. With a great flop and scattering of bronze feathers he went down. I ran up the slope and secured him, a fine gobbler ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... under the chapel eaves. The Book inside, of which they almost make an idol, seemed to think the life of a sparrow—and possibly of a swallow—was of value; still it is good fun to see the callow young come down flop on the ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... any of the hotels on the Bowery were good enough for me—that is, if I had the price, fifteen cents. You can get a bed in a lodging-house for ten cents, or if you have only seven cents you can get a "flop." You can sit in some joint all night if you have a nickel, but if you haven't you can do the next best thing in line, and that is "carry the banner." Think of walking the streets all night and being obliged ...
— Dave Ranney • Dave Ranney
... of the queer high-backed chairs scattered about the room, towards the table, and sat down to enjoy a "feast of reason and a flow of soul." As I turned the mildewed page, something suddenly fell with a dull "flop" upon the paper. It was a drop of blood! I stared at it with a strange sensation of mingled horror and astonishment. Could it have been upon the page before I turned it? No; it was wet and bright, and presented the uneven, broken ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... melodramatic quadruped, prone to startling humanity by erratic leaps, and wild plunges, much shaking of his stubborn head, and lashing out of his vicious heels; now and then falling flat, and apparently dying a la Forrest; a gasp—a squirm—a flop, and so on, till the street was well blocked up, the drivers all swearing like demons in bad hats, and the chief actor's circulation decidedly quickened by every variety of kick, cuff, jerk, and haul. When the ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... forget about it; he had a date with Dee again that night, and he was not going to let something silly like this bother him. But bother him it did. Unlike the night before, the date was an utter fiasco, a complete flop. Dee sensed his mood, misinterpreted it, complained of a headache, and went home early. Turnbull ...
— Dead Giveaway • Gordon Randall Garrett
... TO CROWS Whichever crow shall hereafter hop, fly, or flop into this field during the absence of Jimmy Scarecrow, and therefrom purloin, steal, or abstract corn, shall be instantly, in a twinkling and a trice, turned snow-white, and be ever after a disgrace, a byword and a reproach to his whole race. Per ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... that there are romantic possibilities about letters setting forth on their journey from our floor. To start life with so many flipperties might lead to anything. Each time that we send a letter off we listen in a tremble of excitement for the final FLOP, and when it comes I think we both feel vaguely that we are still waiting for something. We are waiting to hear some magic letter go flipperty-flipperty-flipperty-flipperty ... and behold! there is no FLOP ... and still it goes on—flipperty-flipperty-flipperty- ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 28, 1917 • Various
... this broad land are of heroic mould as are its men. Sons of the open, deep-chested, tall and straight, they ride like conquerors and walk—like bears. Slow to anger and quick to act, they carry their strength and health easily and with a dignity which no worn trappings, faded shirt, or flop-brimmed hat may obscure. Speak to one of them and his level gaze will travel to your feet and back again to your eyes. He may not know what you are, but he assuredly knows what you are not. He will answer you quietly and to the point. If you have been fortunate enough to have ridden ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... being called a shell-fish, because tortoises are not fish at all, and they feel insulted if you call them so. However, he was so glad to get a wife at last, that he said nothing, only presented his back for the Jackal to jump on. Flop! came the Jackal, so heavy by this time that it was all the Tortoise could do to get him across safely. If he was tired before, he was nearly dead now. But he swam across at last; and the Jackal ran off ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... your own business, you know, but a sort of shock to the feelings and finances of the community all the same. Not that it affects me, or that many know of it, but the inner circle is disturbed—and, mind, I'm leading up to Edgington's flop." ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... the Widow at Windsor, It's safest to let 'er alone: For 'er sentries we stand by the sea an' the land Wherever the bugles are blown. (Poor beggars!—an' don't we get blown!) Take 'old o' the Wings o' the Mornin', An' flop round the earth till you're dead; But you won't get away from the tune that they play To the bloomin' old rag over'ead. (Poor beggars!—it's 'ot over'ead!) Then 'ere's to the sons o' the Widow, Wherever, 'owever they roam. 'Ere's all they desire, an' ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... colour and length of flowering season to be used in jungle-like masses for summer colour? Second—has it fragrance or decorative quality for house decoration? Thirdly, has it the backbone to stand alone or will the plant flop and flatten shapelessly at the first hard shower and so render an array of conspicuous stakes necessary? Stakes, next to unsightly insecticides and malodorous fertilizers, are the bane of gardening, but that subject is big ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... Olive riz up and kinder let her train flop out over the floor, she'd held it up as she ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... first, and began to come to the top of the water, as if for air. Very soon they were followed by the larger ones, and soon the water seemed filled with them. They would come to the top of the water, turn on one side, flop about a little as if intoxicated, and then sink helplessly to the bottom, where, the water being nowhere very deep, it was easy to see them and capture them. The natives secured basket after basket full, getting some ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... object of all religion (not religiousness), mental training and development should be the building of character. A religion that does not build up character is worthless. Those who think that they can "flop" through life, avoid, as far as possible, its discipline, make no effort to improve their character, and through believing in a certain creed can miraculously become perfect, simply by dying, are deceiving themselves. We do not become "perfect," i.e., of a strong and ...
— Within You is the Power • Henry Thomas Hamblin
... the heavy flop of the side Cloister door as it closed behind them, and then silence once more and the thin angry voice of Canon Foster, ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... judge, "and the nigger outrode Grogan, if anybody should ask you. He had a chance—if he hadn't let that horse's head flop to ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... of his hind parts, but steady as a pump bolt, and the motion all underneath. When he fairly lays himself to it, he trots like all vengeance. Then look at his ear—jist like rabbit's; none o' your flop-ears like them Amherst beasts, half horses, half pigs, but strait up and p'inted, and not too near at the tips; for that 'ere, I consait, always shows a horse ain't true to draw. There are only two things, Squire, worth lookin' at in a horse, action ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... dealt with proving your soul?—how you spouted it. I know that you are gifted, child, but the world doesn't. If we fail, you at least can, after you pay proper respects to my remains, go back to that adorable aunt of yours and flop in the lap of luxury—but make the attempt to ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... retrograduation^, retroaction; reculade^; retreat, withdrawal, retirement, remigration^; recession &c (motion from) 287; recess; crab-like motion. refluence^, reflux; backwater, regurgitation, ebb, return; resilience reflection, reflexion [Brit.] (recoil) 277; flip-flop, volte-face [Fr.]. counter motion, retrograde motion, backward movement, motion in reverse, counter movement, counter march; veering, tergiversation, recidivation^, backsliding, fall; deterioration &c 659; recidivism, recidivity^. reversal, relapse, turning point ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... himself on the bottom of the boat with a finger and thumb in his gills and a big boot on his paunch, and he will be compelled to disgorge the hook and the bait and all, and he will lay there and try to flop out of the boat, and wonder what kind of a game this is that is being ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... with string, clattering behind—making a beast of a row. Shouting wasn't any earthly. So I rushed in and grabbed him. 'Verney—drop it! What are you doing?' I said sternly; and he looked up at me like a sainted cherub. 'Flop, don't hinder me. I'm walkin' froo the valley of the shadow, an' goodness an' mercy are following me all the days of my life.' That's the fruits of teaching the ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... "Brer Buzzud, he flop down, en he laugh en say he mighty glad, kaze he done git hongry up dar whar he bin. Den Brer Tarrypin tell Brer Buzzud fer ter creep in little ways en tas'e en see how he like um, w'iles he take his stan' on de outside en watch ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... lights, out towards the enemy, serious preparations were made for his reception. The climax came, however, about noon one day at Hill 70 when those who were not asleep heard, with a mixed feeling of old familiarity, "s-s-s-sh-sh-SH—flop." Most of us, after cringing in the usual manner, said, with a relieved air, "Dud." Then followed commotion. They had arrived and were shelling the post. The shimmering desert was eagerly scanned by the officers' field glasses, and all kinds ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... wrapped in cotton with only its queer little wizened face and blue eyes visible it had a startling resemblance to a human baby until its long tail would suddenly flop into sight and dispel the illusion. It lived only four days in ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... ceased. It was the business of a minute fraction of a second. The effect of the New Accelerator passed like the drawing of a curtain, vanished in the movement of a hand. I heard Gibberne's voice in infinite alarm. "Sit down," he said, and flop, down upon the turf at the edge of the Leas I sat—scorching as I sat. There is a patch of burnt grass there still where I sat down. The whole stagnation seemed to wake up as I did so, the disarticulated vibration of the band rushed together into a ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... themselves, 'that villain's got his dose at last, and serve him right too.' They want to enjoy his struggles, while the heroine stands grimly at the door taking care that he doesn't get away. Then when my fist comes down flop on the stage and they realise that I am indeed done for, the yell of triumph that goes up is something delicious ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... told me frankly what you wanted in the first place, Mr. Coulter," he said after an exasperating episode in which Coulter's Pharisaic sensitiveness had resulted in Malcolm's having to "flop" the paper both editorially and in its news columns twice in three days, "we would not have made ourselves ridiculous and contemptible. The public is an ass, but it is an ass with a memory at least three days long. Your stealthiness has ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... with undisguised suspicion, and turned their lanterns on him and followed him about, and this had such an effect upon him at last that he began to feel as if he really had done something, and he got to slinking down the by-streets and hiding in dark doorways when he heard the regulation flip-flop approaching. ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... gracious sake don't talk that way. Oh, of course you've got me now, and I have to flop or be a brute. Yes, you've got me. You know I respect your good sense and love you, so what's the use of this wrangle. There, now, it's all right. I'll promise not to go near him if you say so. And I have made up my mind to attend church with more regularity. ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... think that the fault must lie with either her kettle or her tea-pot, as she seemed, by her account, to get worse every time she drank any tea. So he examined the kettle, turned it upside down, and then, in old Betty's own words, "Out drop a big toad. He tarned the kittle up, and out ta fell flop." Some days before she had "deeved" her kettle into the snow instead of filling it at the pump, and had then got the toad in it, which had thus been slowly simmering into toad-broth. At Tannington also they came to my father to ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... Sol; "but if I'd been through what I reckon you've been through, I'd fall flop on the ground, an' Jim Hart would have to come an' feed me or I'd starve to ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... when she will marry, makes the spirited reply—"Faith, kind uncle, when men abandon jealousy, forsake taking of tobacco, and cease to wear their beards so rudely long. Oh, to have a husband with a mouth continually smoking, with a bush of furs on the ridge of his chin, readie still to flop into his foaming chops, 'tis more than most intolerable;" and similar indications of dislike to smoking could be quoted ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... you can tell by a little pebble I will place on my mother's. You can pick my mother out by a small piece of grass which I will put in her hair, and you can pick me out from my cousins, for when we commence to dance, I will shake my head, flop my ears and switch my tail. You must choose quickly, as they will be very angry at your success, and if you lose any time they will make the excuse that you did not know, that they may have an excuse to trample you ...
— Myths and Legends of the Sioux • Marie L. McLaughlin
... night an' a clear run—you saw it—across the Theatre into the park, and I prayed she'd rise before she hit high timber. I set her all I dared for a quick lift. I told Mankeltow that if I gave her too much nose she'd be liable to up-end and flop. He didn't want another inquest on his estate. No, sir! So I had to fix her up ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... loo, the red-hot wind from the westward, was booming among the tinder-dry trees and pretending that the rain was on its heels. Now and again a spot of almost boiling water would fall on the dust with the flop of a frog, but all our weary world knew that was only pretence. It was a shade cooler in the press-room than the office, so I sat there, while the type ticked and clicked, and the night-jars hooted at the ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... she heard a gulp; then she heard a strangled silence. Then she heard Sally call her name tentatively, tenderly, reproachfully. Then she heard no more. And she knew no more till her feet somehow carried her home. But she had hardly time to flop into a rocker and utter a prayer of gratitude and pride for having been vouchsafed the courage to snub a Carthaginian before Br-r-rr!—the relentless telephone was on her trail. She knew just who it was and she braced herself to meet ...
— Mrs. Budlong's Chrismas Presents • Rupert Hughes
... us. Then for the first time, I suppose, they understood the nature of their disaster. We could not hear their cries, but we saw arms stretched out to us, fists frantically shaken, hands lifted in prayer. We saw Mr. Tubbs flop down upon his unaccustomed knees—it was all ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... was a heavy book, so that I held it on a cushion. (And this device I recommend to others.) It was the kind of book that stays open at your place, if you leave it for a moment to poke the fire. Some books will flop a hundred pages, to make you thumb them back and forth, though whether this be the binder's fault or a deviltry set therein by their authors I am at a loss to say. But Shaw would be of this kind, flopping and spry to mix ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... had. Aunt Emma held Milly, and father held Olly, while they dived their hands under the water and pulled hard. And some of the lilies came out with such short bits of stalk you could scarcely hold them, and sometimes, flop! out came a long green stalk, like a long green snake curling and twisting about in the boat. The children dabbled, and splashed, and pulled, to their hearts' content, till at last Mr. Norton told them they had got enough and now they must ...
— Milly and Olly • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Brer Buzzard! Don't flop yo' wings w'en you laff, kaze den if you duz, sump'n 'ill drap fum up yer, en my gol'-mine won't do you no good, en needer will ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... Dan'l Webster down here on this floor—Dan'l Webster was the name of the frog—and sing out, 'Flies, Dan'l, flies!' and quicker'n you could wink he'd spring straight up and snake a fly off'n the counter there, and flop down on the floor ag'in as solid as a gob of mud, and fall to scratching the side of his head with his hind foot as indifferent as if he hadn't no idea he'd been doin' any more'n any frog might do. You never see a frog so modest and straightfor'ard as ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a loud flop by the window in the rear, and the Tennessee Shad rose slowly from the floor. At the same moment Doc Macnooder, ambling innocently by on the farther sidewalk, turned, dashed across the street, bounded into the shop and, returning to the ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... before the 4th. but ole Max Dinkelheim was walking kind of slow in front of me and I thot I wood try the pistol just once to see if it workt, so I walkt a little faster and shot it off bingo and you shood have seen ole Max jump! He give one flop in the air and hollered, A bom! A bom! I guess he thot I was a submareen, and when he saw it was me beat it after me and we run all the way home, and Max he run rite into dad and sed, Where is that boy I will teech him to molest a peaceful citizen. And dad sed, What has he done? And he told ...
— Deer Godchild • Marguerite Bernard and Edith Serrell
... not say a word. He just jumped against Pinkie Whiskers with such force that the rod flew out of his hand and the little tadpole went flop ...
— Hazel Squirrel and Other Stories • Howard B. Famous
... time turned. The lumps are then broken by striking them with the blade or teeth of the tool. All weeds and trash should be covered during the operation. A common fault of beginners is to put the spade in the soil on a slant and only about half the length of the blade, and then flop the soil over in the hole from which it came, often covering the edge of the unspaded soil. The good spader works from side to side across his piece of ground, keeping a narrow trench or furrow between the spaded and unspaded soil, into which weeds and trash ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich
... shirt and trousers, his collar open, and his sleeves rolled right up to his shoulders. "Hooray!" he cried; and forgetting all his dignity as second officer in command of Her Majesty's ship, he indulged in a kind of triumphal dance, which ended with a flop, caused by his bringing one foot down flat ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... armed with a pillow, down whose front a ghastly slit soon showed itself; but Philip fought well, and Harry was getting worsted and driven into the corner amongst the boots, where the footing was rather bad for bare feet "Flop!" Harry caught it then and staggered back. "Flop" again, for Philip was surpassing himself, and Harry having received the last blow full upon the top of his head went down upon one knee; but he rallied again, ducked to avoid the next blow, and diving under Philip's arm came up behind, ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... night hideous in the city. What bliss to lie there, hour after hour, in a delicious half-waking, half-sleeping, wholly exquisite stupor, only rousing myself to swallow egg-nogg No. 426, and then to flop back again ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... could be offered by the onlookers the climax was reached and passed. Elias Peters rolled slowly out of the saddle and reached the ground with a heavy flop. Then, while its recent burden gathered himself up, quite unhurt and smiling amiably in relief, the horse contentedly mouched off toward ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... not know what to do with him. He cannot be put on a shelf. He cannot be hung on a nail. He will not go out of the house. There is no escape from him, and he is always the same. A smile of a certain dimension, moustaches of this inevitable measurement, hands that waggle and flop like those of automata—these are his. He eats this way and he drinks that way, and he will continue to do so until he stiffens into the ultimate quietude. He snores on this note, he laughs on that, dissonant, unescapeable, ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... I'll show you an eagle flop his wings," promised Mr. Vandeford, and he was surprised that he seemed for the first time to feel the actual glory of the electric signs on his great Broadway, which is as much of an all-American institution as the shipyards ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Eldons, at the least—might as well complain of the system that excludes them from the Woolsack, and take a building to turn it into a Court of Chancery on their own account, as that these luckless scribblers, all fancying the Elizabethan mantle has fallen flop upon their backs, should set themselves up for Shakspeares on their own account, and seize on a metropolitan theatre as a temple for the enshrinement of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... capacity of the Accumulator Register, the overflow flip-flop will be set (see Skip ...
— Preliminary Specifications: Programmed Data Processor Model Three (PDP-3) - October, 1960 • Digital Equipment Corporation
... mean, a total loss?" Bud argued. "Even if the recovery operation's a flop, the shot will still pay off in valuable information, ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... him, that's certain, because I saw him flop over," replied the other; "and that yelp meant sudden pain, as sure as it stood for anything. But he managed to get off, though possibly he ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... pick me up and carry me into the house, though it was all he could do, poor kid, for I was some weight. He staggered up the steps and along a great hall, and then let me flop on the carpet of the most beautiful room you ever saw. The ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... get a running start. Then they usually flop along and sail up into a tree. Once they are in a tree, they can float off into space easily. They seem to fly slowly, but they can disappear fast enough. The ranger seems to be ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... by——!" comes a savage growl from within the tent. "Where is the old man? Give me a look at him!" and the scowling face of Rix makes its sudden appearance at the tent-flop, peering ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... Grisha will keep up his character, too. Although he is a blockhead, he has some sense. Now he'll flop down on the hay and he'll lie there on his belly for ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... said another guest negligently and swore, softly and intensely, at a shoulder strap. "Oh, damn the thing! . . . Well—flop if you want to. I've got ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... suppose he had a drop of any kind in him. If I wanted him to go on one side of the road he was sure to be possessed of an equal desire to go on the other side. Finally I and my mule fell out. I got a big hickory and would frail him over the head, and he would only shake his head and flop his ears, and seem to say, "Well, now, you think you are smart, don't you?" He was a resolute mule, slow to anger, and would have made an excellent merchant to refuse bad pay, or I will pay your credit, for his whole composition seemed to be made up ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... he stretches his wings, like a monstrous bat; Peeks over his shoulder, this way an' that, Fer to see 'f the's anyone passin' by; But the's o'ny a ca'f an' a goslin' nigh. They turn up at him a wonderin' eye, To see—The dragon! he's goin' to fly! Away he goes! Jimminy! what a jump! Flop—flop—an' plump to the ground with a thump! Flutt'rin' ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... and you will have what daddy is doing with space. He does it by shoving fifty or a hundred pounds of lead right out of space; the sudden flattening out of the tensors causes a section of space to flop around, and two portions of space change places. The first time he tried it, his desk disappeared, and we've never seen it again. We've thought it was somewhere out in hyperspace; but this terrible story of yours about disappearing safes, and the ...
— The Einstein See-Saw • Miles John Breuer
... the workman in charge took up a steel bar not unlike a metal yardstick and began pressing down the mass to a uniform thickness. This done he ran the bar deftly beneath and turned the vast piece over just as one would flop over some gigantic griddle-cake. He continued to change it from side to side, pressing it down in any spot where it was too thick, but never once touching it with his hands. He then cut off a long narrow strip and fed it into a machine at his ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... expressed their appreciation of his sympathy and one answered: "Tired o' talkin'! Wall, I reckon so. I'm jes' tireder an' dryer 'n if I'd been tailin' down beef steers all day. My ol' tongue's been a-floppin' till thar ain't nary 'nother flop left in her 'nless I could git to ile her up with a swaller o' red-eye, an—" regretfully—"I reckon thar ain't no sort ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... it, Clemence, like a lamb. It's got to meet, but it's inches apart still. Sit down with a flop, and be your heaviest, while I ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the arms of the deceased and they are ready. For a moment they stand and squirm like angle-worms on a hook, and froth at the mouth, and look, as they stand there, like a pile driver that has been run into by an engine. They teeter up and down a little, and then fly off on a tangent, and they flop around in unexpected places among the other dancers, jump like a box car, bump against other couples, and at every bump they are driven closer together, until they are so near that it does seem as though they will have to be pried apart with a handspike; they look ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... weighs at least six pounds, and just as you are reaching out with the landing net, to take him in, he gives one kick, chews off the line, you fall over backwards, and the bass disappears with a parting flop of the tail, and a man who is fishing a little ways off asks you what you had on your hook, and you say that it was nothing but a confounded dogfish, anyway, and you wind up your reel and go home, and you ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck
... always brushed straight up, his eyes were always very wide open,—and he usually carried a big letter-book with him, keeping in it a certain place with his finger. This book was almost too much for his strength, and he would flop it down, now on this man's desk and now on that man's, and in along career of such floppings had made himself to be very much hated. On the score of some old grudge he and Mr Love did not speak to each other; and for this reason, on all occasions ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... remind him how easily he could do the same, never would he take such chances again! It wasn't worth it. His life was too valuable. Inwardly he was furious that Uncle Bill should have brought him by such a way. His heart turned over and lay down with a flop when he saw that person stop and ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... her attention arrested by the scraping of chairs within the parlour, and concluded in a very different tone, "The girls are coming! For pity's sake don't let Tom find us sentimentalising here! Fly, Rhoda, fly!" and off she ran along the corridor, flop, flop, flop, on her flat-soled shoes, as much in fear of the scrutiny of the head girl as the youngest Blue in ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... if he hung over the top, He could go, but he never could stop; For of course it is clear He had no way to steer, And under the wheel he would flop. ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... Ez I sez afore, de 'fliction am bobscure. You see de feet an' you see de han's, an' you tink dat dey kin go an' do like oder han's an' feet, but dey doesn't an' dey can't. Dere ain't no backbone runnin' up troo de min' an' wen dere ain't no backbone in de min' de pusson jest flop down yere an' flop down dar whareber dere's a com'fo'ble place to flop. Dere's 'flictions dat we kin pray agin an' pray out'n ob, an' dere's oders we jes got ter bar, an' we gits so kinder used to'm at las dat we'd be mo' mis'ble ef dey wuz tooken ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... the River. Slowly you creep from that strange enchanted land. The sullen trout yields. In all gentleness you float him within reach of your net. Quietly, breathlessly you walk ashore, and over the beach, and yet an unnecessary hundred feet from the water lest he retain still a flop. Then you lay him upon the stones and lift ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... bunk-house staring absently at the skyline, "There's a word uh praise I've been aiming to give yuh. I've seen riding, and I've done a trifle in that line myself, and learned some uh the tricks. But I want to say I never did see a man flop his horse any neater than you done that morning. I'll bet there ain't another man in the outfit got next your play. I couldn't uh done it better myself. Where did you learn that? ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... was the price he had always to pay for bread or butter or jam. Finally, she gave him the bread and let him go. Down the back steps he came, running eagerly and calling Frank. Once more in the kitchen began the flop of the churn, once more rose the ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... to wear a ring found in a skeleton's head. I should expect the old bus to flop to the ground while I was doing a stunt, if I had a thing like that on my finger. Aren't you frightened of being haunted by the ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... fair catch, but when his hoss set back the rope busted plumb in two. Now, Shorty, he had an idea that he could ease the work of his hoss a whole pile if he laid holts on the rope whenever his hoss set down to flop a cow. So Shorty, he had holt on this rope and was pulling back hard when the rope busted, and Shorty, he spilled backwards out'n that saddle like he'd been ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... artists at achieving and momentarily living up to romantic settings, but quickly flop down to the lower levels of decent fairness between the high spots of their sentimental flare-ups. Others cannot utter a poetic phrase, make a romantic gesture, or let their eyes show the quick intensity of their tender emotions if they must die for it. This ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... his face. A peremptory order to halt, coupled with a threat to fire, rang out sharply—and Jimmie Dale flung himself flat in the bottom of the boat. The wharf edge seemed to open in little, crackling jets of flame, came the roar of reports like a miniature battery in action, then the FLOP, FLOP, FLOP, as the lead tore up the water around him, the duller thud as a bullet buried its nose in the boat's side, and the curious rip and squeak as a splinter flew. Then Mittel's voice, ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... missed one; you would have thought the fish ran along a wire up to him and down his throat. And I saw the penguin swim under water, and the sea lions sit up, four of them on four wooden chairs, and catch fish also; but they missed sometimes and had to flop off their chairs into the water and then flop out again and flop ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... this dark beauty without fear, and as she sat there she heard an ever-increasing number of little sounds; they were caused by she knew not what: small creatures moving among the pine needles, night birds on the watch for prey, water rats, the flop of fish, the fall of some leaf over-ripe on the tree, her own slow breathing, the muffled ticking of her heart; and into this orchestra of tiny instruments there came slowly, and as if it grew out ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... and get me out. He told me not to go to a certain part of the lake. He had been all over it and tried it before I got my skates on, but I forgot and went. A boy was with me, a skunky little rat, who, when he saw the ice was cracking, tried to pull me back, and then he let go my hand and flop I went in and flop came Billy behind me while the little Fur Coat stood off and bawled for help and said afterward he didn't know how to swim. Having on heavy clothes, I went down quick and was hard to get up, and I would be an angel this minute ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... I want to impress it on your mind, McCann, that I can appreciate a thoughtful cook. What's that, Honeyman? No, indeed, you can't ride my night horse. Love me, love my dog; my horse shares this snap. Now, I don't want to be under the necessity of speaking to any of you first guard, but flop into your saddles ready to take the herd. My turnip says it's ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... Dinkie, after many days' mourning for his lost Scotty, is consoling himself, as other men do, with a substitute. Last Friday he Brought home a flop-eared pup with a drooping tail and an indefinite ancestry, explaining that he had come into possession of the aforementioned animal by the duly ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... you single out the cur you are after, make proper advances, and when he comes sniffling and snuffling and all the time keeping at a safe distance, you drop the sheet-iron on the snow, the brute makes a dive, and you make a flop, you grab the nearest thing grabable—ear, leg, or bunch of hair—and do your best to catch his throat, after which, everything is easy. Slip the harness over the head, push the fore-paws through, and there you are, one dog hooked up and harnessed. After licking the bites and ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson
... the cooking. And I might mention on the side that if you should happen to be marooned in a disused boat on a blustering night, and are ingenious enough (as Roy was) to contrive the cooking facilities, you cannot do better than flop a few rice cakes, watching carefully that they don't burn. You can flop them with a shoe horn if you've ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... that Burr girl has made me sick of curls, with that great black flop of hers stringing down her back. She'd make me sick of anything. I haven't worn my red blouse since she came out with that fiery thing of ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... the Enfield boys beat us at last; leastwise they make 70 tallies to our 58, when Heman Fitts knocks the ball over into Aunt Dorcas Eastman's yard, and Aunt Dorcas comes out an' picks up the ball an' takes it into the house, an' we have to stop playin'. Then Phineas Owens allows he can flop any boy in Belchertown, an' Moses Baker takes him up, an' they wrassle like two tartars, till at last Moses tuckers Phineas out an' downs him as slick ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... had; and he used to try to leap out of the water, head over heels, as they did before a shower came on; but somehow he never could manage it. He liked most, though, to see them rising at the flies, as they sailed round and round under the shadow of the great oak, where the beetles fell flop into the water, and the green caterpillars let themselves down from the boughs by silk ropes for no reason at all; and then changed their foolish minds for no reason at all, either; and hauled ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the play of the rain drops, she would toss up her face to defy them as she ran; then flop her arms up and down in a flying motion, not really ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... steep, and are mostly tiled, and have deep eaves, but do not as elsewhere form the cover of the veranda. While I was looking through the cactus screen of one of these houses, a man came out with a number of low caste, leggy, flop-eared, mangy dogs, who attacked me in a cowardly bullying fashion, yelping, barking, and making surreptitious snaps at my feet. Their owner called them off, however, and pelted them so successfully that ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... not sure," said Rendel. "I am not sure that it is quite an easy thing to have an ardent hold on life. Some people keep letting it down with a flop. But I feel as if I could hold it tight this morning at any rate. I do not believe there is a creature in the wide world that I would change places with at this moment," he went on, the force of his ardent hope and purpose breaking down his ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... Ain't that a funny name fer a river? Pie-ho? Every time I got homesick I'd say that river, an' then I'd see Hogan's Dairy Lunch fer Ladies an' Gents on the ol' Bowery an' hear the kid Mick Hogan yellin': 'Draw one in the dark! White wings—let her flop! Pie-ho!' an' it helped me a heap." ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... straight, an' he looked at me an' down he flops on his knees. An' he made 'em all flop, but I told him I didn't care for them putting up any camp-meeting over me; an' he says, 'I'll lick you,' an' I says, 'Dare you to!' I told him mother kep' a-licking me for nothing, an' I'd not pray for her, not in Sunday-school or anywheres else. ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... afternoon, and learned how pleasant it was to feel the cool, powdery dust running between their hot little toes. With their strong bent for copying, they lay on their sides like their mother and scratched with their tiny feet and flopped with their wings, though they had no wings to flop with, only a little tag among the down on each side, to show where the wings would come. That night she took them to a dry thicket near by, and there among the crisp, dead leaves that would prevent an enemy's silent approach on foot, and under the ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... but when his money ran out he had not returned home. He had drifted, taking jobs here and there, sleeping in flop-houses, jungles, park ...
— They Twinkled Like Jewels • Philip Jose Farmer
... fine, indeed!" cried Buddy Pigg. "I think I will take a nap here," and lopsy-flop! if that little guinea pig didn't curl up inside the cabbage and go fast, fast asleep; and not even his tail stuck out, because, you see, he didn't have any tail—guinea pigs never do have any, which is a good thing, ...
— Buddy And Brighteyes Pigg - Bed Time Stories • Howard R. Garis
... the middle of the Jew's Mouth, which was a scant six hundred yards across at its widest, the Folly Bay No. 5 swung on her anchor chain. A tubby cannery tender lay alongside. The crews were busy with picaroons forking salmon out of the seiner into the tender's hold. The flip-flop of the fish sounded distinctly in that quiet place. Their silver bodies flashed in the sun as they ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Spitter, so soon as he had expended all his breath in shouting for help, sat down with such a flop of despair on the thwart of the boat, as very nearly to swamp it. As it was, the water poured over the starboard gunwale, until the boat was filled up to his ankles. This alarmed him still more, and he remained mute as a stock-fish for ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... to know why not," retorted Bo, as she made the effort. She got one arm and shoulder up, only to flop back like a crippled thing. And she uttered the most piteous little moan. "I'm dead! ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... a flop in the water, and when Bumper turned he saw a queer looking fish swimming toward the shore, using his hind legs instead of fins to propel him along. He had big, staring eyes, and a green head, with white ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh
... retirement, remigration[obs3]; recession &c. (motion from) 287; recess; crab-like motion. refluence[obs3], reflux; backwater, regurgitation, ebb, return; resilience reflection, reflexion (recoil) 277[Brit]; flip-flop, volte- face[Fr]. counter motion, retrograde motion, backward movement, motion in reverse, counter movement, counter march; veering, tergiversation, recidivation|, backsliding, fall; deterioration &c. 659; recidivism, recidivity[obs3]. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... darling,' said Lady Wetherby, melting completely, 'when you get that yearning note in your voice I just flop and take the ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... homely Old Hundredth. It was no wonder that a light, very light, footstep on the gravel outside did not rouse me. The door behind me opened, and Tinker turned his head lazily, and his tail began to flop heavier against the floor. The next moment two soft ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the anchor flop overboard," she announced, springing up from a deck chair. "I think I shall ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... o' the Widow at Windsor, It's safest to let 'er alone: For 'er sentries we stand by the sea an' the land Wherever the bugles are blown. (Poor beggars!—an' don't we get blown!) Take 'old o' the Wings o' the Mornin', An' flop round the earth till you're dead; But you won't get away from the tune that they play To the bloomin' old rag over'ead. (Poor beggars!—it's 'ot over'ead!) Then 'ere's to the sons o' the Widow, Wherever, 'owever they roam. 'Ere's all they desire, an' if they ...
— Barrack-Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... but he answered gravely: "Well that's a way it has of puffing itself up and making a great big pretense that it is going to flop us, and then if just little Bobbie or Ma waves an apron or a stick it gets out of the way ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... one side, old and frayed, like the fat, shaggy, gray mare that drew it; her unchecked, despondent head lowering before her, while her incongruous tail waved incessantly, like the banner of a storming party. The editor did not hear the flop of the mare's feet nor the sound of the wheels, so deep was his reverie, till the vehicle was nearly opposite him. The red-faced and perspiring driver drew rein, and the journalist looked up and waved a long white hand ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... reckon I wouldn't have hurt you. None of these flop-over Janes for me!... An' I'll give you a hunch, Pretty Eyes. You might have run acrost a fellar thet was ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... adjusted her tam-o'-shanter to its flop over her right ear, and, drawing off a pair of dark-blue silk gloves from over immaculately new white ones, entered Ceiner's Cafe Hungarian. In its light she was not so obviously blonder than young, the pink spots in her cheeks had a ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... oh, sad! oh, dire to tell!" (Said BAINES). "Be good enough to stop." And senseless on the floor he fell, With unpremeditated flop! ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... is flitting here to see, The waked birds preen and the seals flop lazily, Soon you will have, Dear, to vanish from me, For the stars close their shutters and the Dawn whitens hazily. Trust me, I mind not, though Life lours The bringing me here; nay, bring me here again! I am just the same as when Our days were a joy ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... think about it any more, thank goodness," Jane exclaimed, rising from the grass and laying a hand on the bag. "Let's put an end to the whole thing now and go home. Take a holt of the other end, and we'll flop it in." ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... of building houses, their eyes nearly starting out of their heads, in their anxiety to make houses three stories high; but, spite of all their efforts, the moment they attempted the third story, down would come all the cards with a flop, leaving the builders with a long-sounding O—h, to stare ...
— Little Mittens for The Little Darlings - Being the Second Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... appreciation of his sympathy and one answered: "Tired o' talkin'! Wall, I reckon so. I'm jes' tireder an' dryer 'n if I'd been tailin' down beef steers all day. My ol' tongue's been a-floppin' till thar ain't nary 'nother flop left in her 'nless I could git to ile her up with a swaller o' red-eye, an—" regretfully—"I reckon thar ain't no ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... side and me and Cuttle was on the other side. Shorty daubed his rope and made a fair catch, but when his hoss set back the rope busted plumb in two. Now, Shorty, he had an idea that he could ease the work of his hoss a whole pile if he laid holts on the rope whenever his hoss set down to flop a cow. So Shorty, he had holt on this rope and was pulling back hard when the rope busted, and Shorty, he spilled backwards out'n that saddle like he'd ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... satisfaction. He had hardly finished speaking when they again heard an unexpectedly violent whistling which suddenly ended with a thud into something soft... f-f-flop! and a Cossack, riding a little to their right and behind the accountant, crashed to earth with his horse. Zherkov and the staff officer bent over their saddles and turned their horses away. The accountant stopped, facing the Cossack, and examined him with attentive curiosity. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... day. At de fus peepin' uv de day, Brer Dan'l he usen fur ter hop outn his bed and git down on his knees; and soon's eber de horn hit blowed fur de hans ter come outn de field fur dinner, Brer Dan'l he went in his house, he did, and he flop right back on 'is knees. And wen de sun set, den dar he wuz agin er prayin' and ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... why yesterday,—because that Burr girl has made me sick of curls, with that great black flop of hers stringing down her back. She'd make me sick of anything. I haven't worn my red blouse since she came out with that fiery thing of ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... that night—and the same performance will start again early the next morning. Why, if there were not a continuous stream of visitors for three days, the wedding would be thought rather a flop! ...
— Have We No Rights? - A frank discussion of the "rights" of missionaries • Mabel Williamson
... mother had come back late and were taking a short cut through the alleys to the terminus of the Edinburgh trams (one saved twopence by not taking the Leith trams and had a sense of recovering the cost of the expedition), and were half-way down a silent street when they heard behind them flippety-flop, flippety-flop, stealthy and wicked as the human foot may be. They turned and saw a great black figure, humped but still high, keeping step with them a yard or so behind. Several times they turned, terrified ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... I get lost at C when I sing. He's crazy, that feller is. He started the Silver Foxes. There's a feller in that patrol can move his ears without touching them. I should worry as long as I can move my mouth. I'll show you how to flop a fried egg in the pan only you have to look it doesn't come down on your head. You can scramble eggs but you can't unscramble them. Once one came down on my head. I took a ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... snickering, "Come on, don't be a tightwad. Swell car—poor man with no eats, not even a two-bits flop for tonight. Could yuh loosen up and slip me just ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... they could see the whale every now and then heave himself out of the water, half the length of his long dark body, and fall "flop" down again, with a concussion that sent up the water around him in white surf, like breakers. After this little diversion, he amused himself with swimming backwards and forwards past the ship, as if just showing what he could do, at a great rate; exposing only a thin streak ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... fascination; not, perhaps, at meal-times, when the water is lashed to froth by the darting, gleaming bodies—that is too greedy a business. But when a passer-by on a spring morning sees a pound fish fall back into the water with a meditative flop, he may pay the pond the compliment of wishing himself elsewhere. One accompaniment of a trout farm he may hope to escape—the sight of a dead kingfisher. Without wire netting, kingfishers find out the young fry only too quickly, and a dead kingfisher spoils all pleasure ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... "By that big, flop-branched tree, with the great supports like stays. I remember it as well as can be. Off to the right, sir, and in a quarter of an hour we shall be in ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... him rapidly, one after another. In spite of the volley the man still crawled upwards, but as he reached the top of the low house and passed his legs over he gave a feeble moan and then.... flopper-ti flop, flopper-ti flop, he crashed down the other side and ended with a dull thud on the ground. On the other side there he was dead as a door-nail and all covered with blood. It was our first proper work. But he was not a soldier, he was a Boxer; and in place of the former ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... sweltering inferno of your cabin, only to reappear likewise with a steward and a mattress. The latter, if you are wise, you spread where the wind of the ship's going will be full upon you. It is a strong wind and blows upon you heavily, so that the sleeves and legs of your pyjamas flop, but it is a soft, warm wind, and beats you as with muffled fingers. In no temperate clime can you ever enjoy this peculiar effect of a strong breeze on your naked skin without even the faintest surface chilly sensation. So habituated has one become to ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... be silly. But I am bitterly disappointed in you. I have taken so much pains over your social education. But you are like a girl in iron stays, the moment you remove the support (which is my guiding hand) you go flop! Now don't turn rusty, or cry," as tears of passion well into Eleanor's eyes. "I want you at my party—I want youth and beauty, for I have a reputation for producing lovely women, good-looking men, and distractingly sweet girls. Carol ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... the same moment a loud flop was heard on the quarter-deck. It was the forgotten mermaid, who, emerging from her stateroom, and ascending the companion-way at that moment, had fainted at the spectacle. The Pirate Prodigy rushed to her side with a bottle ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... the capacity of the Accumulator Register, the overflow flip-flop will be set (see Skip ...
— Preliminary Specifications: Programmed Data Processor Model Three (PDP-3) - October, 1960 • Digital Equipment Corporation
... opposite bench. "I think it will work. But after that—" He stared, glaring, at the heavy tungsten dome with its heavy tungsten contacts, across which the flame of released atomic energy was supposed to have leapt. "That was probably the flattest flop any experiment ever flopped." ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell
... improvement. Now, they gaze on her from afar: yet she never had difficulty with any of them—till August, alas. That was my fault, for bringing in a wild man from the woods, who could not be counted on or ruled like the rest, but would flop around in his uncircumcised way and break things. I should never forgive myself for that, if I did not hope to get matters right—and more so than they ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... Lydia, clinging with one hand to a stump of willow, caught up a stick lying on the bank with the other, and, hanging over the stream, tried to head back the truant. All that happened was that her foot slipping on a pebble went flop into the shallow water, and part ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... And all creation, By flyin' over the celebration! Over their heads I'll sail like an eagle; I'll balance myself on my wings like a sea-gull; I'll dance on the chimbleys; I'll stan' on the steeple; I'll flop up to winders an' scare the people! I'll light on the libbe'ty-pole, an' crow; An' I'll say to the gawpin' fools below, 'What world's this 'ere That I've come near?' Fer I'll make 'em believe I'm a chap ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... fly off into the trees, but when he got home mother scolded him for having let it go when its parents were not about; she said it would die of starvation, and was going on at him when in flew the jackdaw and came flop on her shoulder! After that mother and father said they'd keep the daw a little longer, and then he could let it go at a distance where there were other daws about. By and by they said they'd let it stay where it was. Father liked a bloater for his tea, and there was nothing the jackdaw ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... lower down—by his paddock, in front o' Parkmaze Pool. I was a-bearing across towards Bloom's End, and lo and behold, there was a man just brought out o' the Pool, dead; he had un'rayed for a dip, but not being able to pitch it just there had gone in flop over his head. Men looked at en; women looked at en; children looked at en; nobody knowed en. He was covered wi' a sheet; but I catched sight of his voot, just showing out as they carried en along. 'I don't care what name that man went by,' ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... contrarily everything happened! Grisha will keep up his character, too. Although he is a blockhead, he has some sense. Now he'll flop down on the hay and he'll lie there on his ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... young one was also larky we cannot tell, but while the negro was speaking it executed a flourish (whether intentional or otherwise who can say?) which knocked the big grey rat off the beam, and caused it to fall with a heavy flop on Hockins's face. Three others fell off in their ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... Flippity-flop! Flippity-flop! Here comes the butcher to bring us a chop Cantering, cantering down the wide street On his little bay mare with the funny white feet; Cantering, cantering out to the farm, Stripes on his apron and basket on arm. Run to the window and tell ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis
... the process of slow motions, rolling over loosely on one side should be practised,—remaining there until the weight all seems near the floor, and then giving way so that the force of gravity seems to "flop" it back (I use "flop" advisedly); so again resting on the other side. But one must go over by regular motions, raising the leg first heavily and letting it fall with its full weight over the other leg, so that the ankles are ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... A long file of pelicans, their wings outspread, sailed close to the surface of the ocean, undulating over the waves and into the hollows exactly paralleling, at a height of only a few feet, the restless contour of the sea. Occasionally they would all flop their wings two or three ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... rose with an air of inspiration, took Mr. Butteridge's ripped, demolished, and ransacked waistcoat, and hurled it from the balloon whence it fluttered down slowly and eddyingly until at last it came to rest with a contented flop upon the face of German tourist sleeping peacefully beside the Hohenweg near Wildbad. Also this sent the balloon higher, and so into a position still more convenient for observation by our imaginary angel who would next have seen Mr. Smallways tear open his own jacket and ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... ruther go somewhar else an' he did—poor, ignorant devil! I went to t' other feller that was rasslin' with a log tryin' to git it under him. He'd flop the log an' then it would flop him. He'd throwed his rifle 'crost the timber. I goes over an' picks it up an' ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... Lieutenant Wilder; I myself wearing my overcoat, and snuggling up to my friend Cook. All four lay as close as possible facing in the same direction. The night wears slowly away. When the floor seemed intolerably hard, one of us would say aloud, "Spoon!" and all four would flop over, and rest on the other side. So we vibrated back and forth from nine o'clock till dawn. We were not comfortable, but in far better circumstances than most of the prisoners. Indeed Captain Cook repeatedly declared he owed his ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... jumpin' to my feet an' blushin' clear to my ears. "I ain't neither one o' your parents an' I ain't your teacher. If you want to know things you ask Melisse. If you don't put a curb on yourself I'm goin' to flop myself on Starlight an' streak for the Lion Head this very minute, an' I won't stop before ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... shoulders—no wabblin' of his hind parts, but steady as a pump bolt, and the motion all underneath. When he fairly lays himself to it, he trots like all vengeance. Then look at his ear—jist like rabbit's; none o' your flop-ears like them Amherst beasts, half horses, half pigs, but strait up and p'inted, and not too near at the tips; for that 'ere, I consait, always shows a horse ain't true to draw. There are only two things, Squire, ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... a June night can be, and the loo, the red-hot wind from the westward, was booming among the tinder-dry trees and pretending that the rain was on its heels. Now and again a spot of almost boiling water would fall on the dust with the flop of a frog, but all our weary world knew that was only pretence. It was a shade cooler in the press-room than the office, so I sat there, while the type ticked and clicked, and the night-jars hooted at the ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... education, and he could do 'most anything—and I believe him. Why, I've seen him set Dan'l Webster down here on this floor—Dan'l Webster was the name of the frog—and sing out, 'Flies, Dan'l, flies!' and quicker'n you could wink he'd spring straight up and snake a fly off'n the counter there, and flop down on the floor ag'in as solid as a gob of mud, and fall to scratching the side of his head with his hind foot as indifferent as if he hadn't no idea he'd been doin' any more'n any frog might do. You never see a frog so modest and straightfor'ard as he was, ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... alongside the galiot, on board which the skipper stepped. As soon as he was out of her the bow of the boat came down with a flop in the water. He then stood ready to receive the Count and Baron. As he helped them up on deck, he congratulated them on having thus successfully performed the first part of their voyage. "And now, Mynheers," he continued, "I must beg you to admire the masts and rigging, the yellow tint ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston
... joy-riders; not one of the hundred sounds which make night hideous in the city. What bliss to lie there, hour after hour, in a delicious half-waking, half-sleeping, wholly exquisite stupor, only rousing myself to swallow egg-nogg No. 426, and then to flop back again on the ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... knew, and leaping out, I whirled my cap and yelled to wake the marsh. The startled hawk jerked, keeled, lifted with a violent struggle, and let go her hold. Down fell the writhing, twisting fish at my feet. It was a splendid striped bass, weighing at least four pounds, and still live enough to flop. ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... to need time for reflection. "Oh, yes! He sent in his card on the 'first night' of my show that opened in January.... It was a flop—lasted only five weeks.... We chatted of the Forsyte girls who are now in Hamilton, most of whom I went to school with or have met at ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... way of flying drawbridge, joined it to the shore. And it was a dreary moment for Jimson when he pulled this after him and found himself alone on this unwholesome fortress. He could hear the rats scuttle and flop in the abhorred interior; the key cried among the wards like a thing in pain; the sitting-room was deep in dust, and smelt strong of bilge-water. It could not be called a cheerful spot, even for a composer absorbed in beloved toil; how much ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fight the lame When they deserve to cop it. So do not try to pipe your eye, Or with my flip I'll flop it." ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... higher than any of them. You could put me in the pen, perhaps—with Heinzman's testimony. But the minute Heinzman appears on the stand, I'll land him high and dry and gasping, without a chance to flop." ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... with a man everlastingly bothering the Almighty with his silly troubles. It seems such cheek. Anyhow, this morning I—I have never done any harm to any God's creature knowingly—I prayed. A sudden impulse—I went flop on my knees; so ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... those in the big room did not find it very easy to bear. His hair was always brushed straight up, his eyes were always very wide open,—and he usually carried a big letter-book with him, keeping in it a certain place with his finger. This book was almost too much for his strength, and he would flop it down, now on this man's desk and now on that man's, and in along career of such floppings had made himself to be very much hated. On the score of some old grudge he and Mr Love did not speak to each other; and for this reason, on all occasions of fault-finding, ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... pillow, down whose front a ghastly slit soon showed itself; but Philip fought well, and Harry was getting worsted and driven into the corner amongst the boots, where the footing was rather bad for bare feet "Flop!" Harry caught it then and staggered back. "Flop" again, for Philip was surpassing himself, and Harry having received the last blow full upon the top of his head went down upon one knee; but he rallied again, ducked to avoid the next blow, ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... and you think you never saw such a nice bass, and that it weighs at least six pounds, and just as you are reaching out with the landing net, to take him in, he gives one kick, chews off the line, you fall over backwards, and the bass disappears with a parting flop of the tail, and a man who is fishing a little ways off asks you what you had on your hook, and you say that it was nothing but a confounded dogfish, anyway, and you wind up your reel and go home, and you are so mad and hot that the leaves on the trees curl up and turn yellow ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck
... up, Ginger!" Peter called lustily, but Ginger only seemed to flop in deeper, through ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Country • Laura Lee Hope
... thirsty, so he flew over to the Round Pond to have a drink. He stooped and dipped his beak in the pond; he thought it was his beak, but, of course, it was only his nose, and therefore, very little water came up, and that not so refreshing as usual, so next he tried a puddle and he fell flop into it. When a real bird falls in flop, he spreads out his feathers and pecks them dry, but Peter could not remember what was the thing to do, and he decided rather sulkily to go to sleep on the ...
— Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... appreciate a thoughtful cook. What's that, Honeyman? No, indeed, you can't ride my night horse. Love me, love my dog; my horse shares this snap. Now, I don't want to be under the necessity of speaking to any of you first guard, but flop into your saddles ready to take the herd. My turnip says it's eight ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... brick pillars. The roofs of these are rather steep, and are mostly tiled, and have deep eaves, but do not as elsewhere form the cover of the veranda. While I was looking through the cactus screen of one of these houses, a man came out with a number of low caste, leggy, flop-eared, mangy dogs, who attacked me in a cowardly bullying fashion, yelping, barking, and making surreptitious snaps at my feet. Their owner called them off, however, and pelted them so successfully that some ran away whimpering, and two pretended (as dogs will) to have broken legs. ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... companions take up the parable in turn, "and the echoes, huddling in affright, like Odin's hounds," go baying down the valleys and clamouring amongst the pines, like a legion of invisible fiends after a strange cat. Then again all is hush, and tramp, and sanctity, and flop, and holy meditation! And so the pilgrimage is ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... became suddenly and violently agitated. Marion was turning over with a movement that, in one less gracefully slim, might be called a flop. ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... don't really want to have a great crowd of friends, do you? It is only weak-minded people like myself who flop on any stranger's neck with protestations of undying affection. It is the easiest thing in the world for any Douglas that ever was to make friends: I think because we are always willing to laugh at the feeblest jest. ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... as he had expended all his breath in shouting for help, sat down with such a flop of despair on the thwart of the boat, as very nearly to swamp it. As it was, the water poured over the starboard gunwale, until the boat was filled up to his ankles. This alarmed him still more, and he remained mute as a stock-fish for a quarter ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... book, so that I held it on a cushion. (And this device I recommend to others.) It was the kind of book that stays open at your place, if you leave it for a moment to poke the fire. Some books will flop a hundred pages, to make you thumb them back and forth, though whether this be the binder's fault or a deviltry set therein by their authors I am at a loss to say. But Shaw would be of this kind, flopping and spry to mix ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... lie about it. With his feet gone quite stiff, the patient didn't help me a bit. Then at last the legs of it—they'd been pulled about so—came unstuck at the knees, and his breeks tore away, and all the lot came, flop! There was me, all of a sudden, with a full boot in each fist. The legs and feet had to ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... "but if I'd been through what I reckon you've been through, I'd fall flop on the ground, an' Jim Hart would have to come an' feed me or I'd starve to ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... villain's got his dose at last, and serve him right too.' They want to enjoy his struggles, while the heroine stands grimly at the door taking care that he doesn't get away. Then when my fist comes down flop on the stage and they realise that I am indeed done for, the yell of triumph that goes up is something ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... nater. They can make nests, and fill them with pretty downy chicks, they can be happy and beautiful in life and mean; they can spend their lives in jest as honerable and worthy a way as if they wuz a flyin' round, and make a good honerable appearance from day to day, till they begin to flop their wings, and fly — then their mean is not beautiful and inspirin'; no, it is fur from it. It is tuff to see 'em, tuff to see the floppin', tuff to see their vain efforts to soar through the air, tuff to see 'em fall percepitously down onto the ground agin. For they must come ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... alternately; and when we saw him do this, we presently began also to knock our heads against the wall, keeping time with him and with each other, till the priest said, 'Peter! it's dragon-time now,' whereat the roof flew off, and a great yellow dragon came down on the chapel-floor with a flop, and danced about clumsily, wriggling his fat tail, and saying to a sort of tune, 'O the Devil, the Devil, the Devil, O the Devil,' so I went up to him, and put my hand on his breast, meaning to slay him, and so awoke, and found myself standing up with my hand on the breast of an armed ...
— The World of Romance - being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856 • William Morris
... they knew was that without any warning Landy was seen to be dragged out of the stern of the skiff, struggle to clasp his writhing legs about the pushpole that stood at an oblique angle, caught firmly in the tenacious mud, and then releasing his hold, flop with a great splash into the dark-colored ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... held Milly, and father held Olly, while they dived their hands under the water and pulled hard. And some of the lilies came out with such short bits of stalk you could scarcely hold them, and sometimes, flop! out came a long green stalk, like a long green snake curling and twisting about in the boat. The children dabbled, and splashed, and pulled, to their hearts' content, till at last Mr. Norton told them they had got ...
— Milly and Olly • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... then, by——!" comes a savage growl from within the tent. "Where is the old man? Give me a look at him!" and the scowling face of Rix makes its sudden appearance at the tent-flop, ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... thought the fish ran along a wire up to him and down his throat. And I saw the penguin swim under water, and the sea lions sit up, four of them on four wooden chairs, and catch fish also; but they missed sometimes and had to flop off their chairs into the water and then flop out again and flop ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... It was with a kind of savage strength that he gripped the rifle; and it was with a cold and deadly intent that he aimed and fired. The first Greaser huddled low, let his carbine go clattering down, and then crawled behind the rim. The second and third jerked back. The fourth seemed to flop up over the crest of lava. A dark arm reached for him, clutched his leg, tried to drag him up. It was in vain. Wildly grasping at the air the bandit fell, slid down a steep shelf, rolled over the rim, to go hurtling down ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... pleasurable business. We feel now that there are romantic possibilities about letters setting forth on their journey from our floor. To start life with so many flipperties might lead to anything. Each time that we send a letter off we listen in a tremble of excitement for the final FLOP, and when it comes I think we both feel vaguely that we are still waiting for something. We are waiting to hear some magic letter go flipperty-flipperty-flipperty-flipperty ... and behold! there is no FLOP ... and still it goes on—flipperty-flipperty-flipperty- flipperty—growing fainter ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 28, 1917 • Various
... make himself twenty dollars, your fee won't exceed a hundred and fifty! You're as liberal with money as Grant's Tomb is with advice. But if you're on the level with this, I'll bet you a thousand bucks, American money, to five hundred of the same coinage, that you'll flop like a seal on your first try. They's only one thing ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... trout yields. In all gentleness you float him within reach of your net. Quietly, breathlessly you walk ashore, and over the beach, and yet an unnecessary hundred feet from the water lest he retain still a flop. Then you lay him upon the stones and lift up your heart ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... a state of affairs that caused the men little worry. As long as they had enough to eat they were quite content. They were down-and-outers, all of them, human derelicts recruited from the park benches and cheap flop houses of Los Angeles. They had only one thing in common: all of them were ...
— The Cavern of the Shining Ones • Hal K. Wells
... back in search of something substantial enough to support my weight and that of Nobs as well. I had gotten well over the area of the wreck when not a half-dozen yards ahead of me a lifeboat shot bow foremost out of the ocean almost its entire length to flop down upon its keel with a mighty splash. It must have been carried far below, held to its mother ship by a single rope which finally parted to the enormous strain put upon it. In no other way can I account for its having leaped so far out ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... on the other side with an angry flop and tried to go to sleep again; but that was quite out of the question. He could do nothing but rail at Tom for his stupidity, and wonder if the latter would have sense enough to hide the revolver before Mr. ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... he did the loop himself, hardly conscious of Bland's presence. Bland turned his head, signalling, and did a flop, righted, and was flying straight in the opposite direction. Again, and flew southeast by the sun. They practised that manoeuver again and again before Johnny felt fairly sure of himself, but once he did it he was one proud ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... said. "Here's the handkerchief! You will fasten it so that it doesn't flop, won't you? May I hold that case? ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... her robe a glittering knife about a foot long. The young man, seeing her do this, ran out in a fright and she after him, only to find that he had vanished. She then threw her dagger up into the air, and whish! a streak of light like a rainbow, and something came tumbling down with a flop. Ku got a light, and ran to see what it was; and lo! there lay a white fox, head in one place and body in another. "There is your friend," cried the girl; "I knew he would cause me to destroy him sooner or later." Ku dragged it into the house, and said, "Let ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... I will place on my mother's. You can pick my mother out by a small piece of grass which I will put in her hair, and you can pick me out from my cousins, for when we commence to dance, I will shake my head, flop my ears and switch my tail. You must choose quickly, as they will be very angry at your success, and if you lose any time they will make the excuse that you did not know, that they may have an excuse ...
— Myths and Legends of the Sioux • Marie L. McLaughlin
... upward in the late spring rain, gaining the bare summit under the drizzly sky, a rush of dogs met me. They leaped and slavered and jumped and flopped and tumbled and whined all about me and over me ... ten of them ... hound dogs with flop-ears and small, red-rimmed eyes ... skinny creatures ... there was no danger from them; but they planted their mud-sticky paws everywhere in a frenzy ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... nods as it lifts over the wavelets—nods again, sinks a little, jerks up, and then goes down out of sight. Orion feels the weight. 'Two pounds, if he's an ounce!' he shouts: soon after a splendid perch is in the boat, nearer three pounds perhaps than two. Flop! whop! how he leaps up and down on the planks, soiled by the mud, dulling his broad back and barred sides on the grit ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... him. Not far distant on the trail ahead of them they beheld a dark, ominous-looking mass, vividly conspicuous against the snow. Suddenly the object moved and resolved itself unmistakably into a horse struggling to rise. For an instant they saw the head and the fore-part of the body lift, and then flop prone again. Close against ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... yere wuz er sho' 'nuff vision! I wuz er feelin' bad all day yistiddy. Soon in de mawnin', ez I wuz gwine 'long de road, I see a big black bird er settin' on de fence. He flop his wings, look right at me en say, 'Corpse! Corpse! Corpse!'"—Aleck's voice dropped to a whisper—"'en las' night de Ku Kluxes come ter ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... (cornicoides). We put him down on the deck, where he strutted about in the proudest way, his feet going flop—flop—flop as he walked. He was a most beautiful bird, sooty black body, a great black head with a line of white over each eye and a gorgeous violet line running along his black beak. He treated us with the greatest contempt, which, from such a beautiful creature, ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... believe him. Why, I've seen him set Dan'l Webster down here on this floor—Dan'l Webster was the name of the frog—and sing out, 'Flies, Dan'l, flies!' and quicker'n you could wink he'd spring straight up and snake a fly off'n the counter there, and flop down on the floor ag'in as solid as a gob of mud, and fall to scratching the side of his head with his hind foot as indifferent as if he hadn't no idea he'd been doin' any more'n any frog might do. You never see a frog so modest and straightfor'ard as he was, for all he was so gifted. And when ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... thought I could, but now I ain't so sure. I could make 'em whirl 'round and 'round like a mill or a set of sailor paddles, but to make 'em flap is different. They've got to be put on strong enough so they won't flop off. You see," he added, solemnly, "if they kept floppin' off they wouldn't keep flappin' on. There's all the difference in the world ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... people," continued Grandfather Frog, without paying the least attention to Peter's interruption. "Old Mr. Bat had wings; something no other animal had, but he found that he could no longer run and jump. He could just flop about on the ground, and was almost helpless. Of course that meant that he could very easily be caught, and so the ground was no longer a safe place for him. But he soon found that he was not safe in the air in daytime. Old Mr. Hawk could fly even faster than ...
— Mother West Wind 'Why' Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... was a pitchy black night, as stifling as a June night can be, and the loo, the red-hot wind from the westward, was booming among the tinder-dry trees and pretending that the rain was on its heels. Now and again a spot of almost boiling water would fall on the dust with the flop of a frog, but all our weary world knew that was only pretence. It was a shade cooler in the press-room than the office, so I sat there, while the type ticked and clicked, and the night-jars hooted at the windows, and the all but ...
— The Man Who Would Be King • Rudyard Kipling
... arms of the deceased and they are ready. For a moment they stand and squirm like angle-worms on a hook, and froth at the mouth, and look, as they stand there, like a pile driver that has been run into by an engine. They teeter up and down a little, and then fly off on a tangent, and they flop around in unexpected places among the other dancers, jump like a box car, bump against other couples, and at every bump they are driven closer together, until they are so near that it does seem as though they ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... he keeled right over and gosh, how he did flop around! It was a fit all right. I bet he died, too, because he went limp all at once. He acted like he'd seen a ghost. He yelled, 'What did you give him?' to the other fellow. What did he call him?" he asked Beany. "I heard ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine
... bass, as he worked in the back-yard, 'All people that on earth do dwell,'—the dear homely Old Hundredth. It was no wonder that a light, very light, footstep on the gravel outside did not rouse me. The door behind me opened, and Tinker turned his head lazily, and his tail began to flop heavier against the floor. The next moment two soft arms were round ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... hiding her face. A tear falls on her silk dress with a little dull flop. Young Saint Sinnes looks at her—almost as if he were going to take her in his arms. Then he shuts his upper teeth over his lower lip, hard—just as he does when riding ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... I wouldn't have hurt you. None of these flop-over Janes for me!... An' I'll give you a hunch, Pretty Eyes. You might have run acrost a fellar thet was ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... broad land are of heroic mould as are its men. Sons of the open, deep-chested, tall and straight, they ride like conquerors and walk—like bears. Slow to anger and quick to act, they carry their strength and health easily and with a dignity which no worn trappings, faded shirt, or flop-brimmed hat may obscure. Speak to one of them and his level gaze will travel to your feet and back again to your eyes. He may not know what you are, but he assuredly knows what you are not. He will answer you quietly and to the point. If you ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... turn them—sticking plaster never stuck tighter than those cakes adhered to that griddle; she worked carefully, she insinuated her knife under just the outer edge of the cake, then gradually approached the centre, but when the final flop came, they went into little sticky hopeless heaps. "They are too thin," she ejaculated. "Joanna, bring flour. Now we shall have it all right." Then another set took their places on the griddle; these held together, they turned—triumph at last! but they did not look ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... father's men as Ram—Shackle trotted up over the hill, stopping once to flop down on the grass to gaze at the cutter, lying a mile out now from the shore, and thinking how different she was with her trim rigging and white sails to the rough lugger of his father, and the dirty three-masted vessels that ran to and fro across the Channel, and upon which he ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... you, and he is tired out, and you think you never saw such a nice bass, and that it weighs at least six pounds, and just as you are reaching out with the landing net, to take him in, he gives one kick, chews off the line, you fall over backwards, and the bass disappears with a parting flop of the tail, and a man who is fishing a little ways off asks you what you had on your hook, and you say that it was nothing but a confounded dogfish, anyway, and you wind up your reel and go home, and you are so mad and hot that the leaves on the trees curl up and turn yellow like late in ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck
... meal-times, when the water is lashed to froth by the darting, gleaming bodies—that is too greedy a business. But when a passer-by on a spring morning sees a pound fish fall back into the water with a meditative flop, he may pay the pond the compliment of wishing himself elsewhere. One accompaniment of a trout farm he may hope to escape—the sight of a dead kingfisher. Without wire netting, kingfishers find out the young fry ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... in fifty,' says Joe, careless. 'I takes hold of him 'cause he's bad in front, 'n' he's likely to do a flop when he gets tired. So long, Bud!' Joe says to me, 'n' I takes the ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... finding himself treated in this way, soon dropped the chicken out of his mouth. Little Betty rolled out from between his white teeth and fell flop! to the ground. ...
— Dick and His Cat and Other Tales • Various
... shredding the flesh into long strips, he watched the lower trail. Ten days had gone by since he had fled across the Valley, but the danger of pursuit had not passed and, as he saw a great owl that was nesting down below rise up blindly and flop away he paused and reached for ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... play, and it would give Godolphin a chance to show his noble frame in something like the majesty of nature. Godolphin would like nothing better. We could have Atland rescue Salome, and Godolphin could flop round among the canvas breakers for ten minutes, and come on for a recall with the heroine, both dripping real ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... short hairs on the back o' my neck had time to lie down. They stood on end again once or twice in the afternoon, when we'd some more repairin' under fire to do; an' then to wind up the day they turned a maxim on just as we was comin' away from the post, an' we had to flop on our faces with the bullets zizz-izz-ipping just over us. We took a trench, I hear; an' the Jocks in front of us had thirty casualties, and the Guards on our left 'ad some more, 'cos I seed 'em ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... Sing on, da'kies! But I flop my wings an' go Fu' de sheltah of de ve'y highest tree, Fu' dey 's too much close ertention—an' dey's too much fallin' snow— An' it's too nigh Chris'mus ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... man, seeing her do this, ran out in a fright and she after him, only to find that he had vanished. She then threw her dagger up into the air, and whish! a streak of light like a rainbow, and something came tumbling down with a flop. Ku got a light, and ran to see what it was; and lo! there lay a white fox, head in one place and body in another. "There is your friend," cried the girl; "I knew he would cause me to destroy him sooner ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... one, 'here it is! I say I saw the Devil himself fly off Drachenfels, and flop into Cologne. Fritz here, and Frankenbauch, saw him too. They'll swear to him: so 'll I. Hell's thunder! will we. Yonder fellows will have it 'twas a flash o' lightning, as if I didn't see him, horns, tail, and claws, and a mighty sight ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... beginning when Sanderson saw a puff of smoke burst from behind a rock held by one of his men; he heard the crash of a pistol, and saw one of Dale's men flop into view from behind a ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... the window, saw him stagger and then flop down all of a heap over the kidney-beans, whose props, giving way as he ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... was Flipperty Flop. She was a large jointed doll (not a doll with large joints,) had seen a great deal of the world, and didn't think much of it. She came of a high family, and had such blue blood in her veins, that the ground wasn't good enough for her to walk on. She wore a "'pellent cloak" and rubber boots, and ...
— Little Folks Astray • Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke)
... went out. In the blackness which followed, each stage of the Phoenix's descent could be heard as clearly as cannon shots: the twanging and snapping as it tumbled through the wires, a drawn-out squawk and the flop of wings in the air below, the crash into the hedge, the jarring thud against the ground. Broken wires began to sputter ominously and fire out sparks. A smell of singed feathers and ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd
... because when one of the bell-shaped flowers is inflated by the breath whilst the top edges are held firmly together; the wind bag thus formed, if struck smartly against the other hand, goes off with a sounding pop. The peasantry also call it "Flop a dock." Strangely enough, the Foxglove, so handsome and striking in a landscape, is not [206] mentioned by Shakespeare, or by either of the old English poets. The "long purples" of Shakespeare refers ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... dinosaurs browsed on the quaint herbage, and Pterodactyls—those ravenous bat-winged dragons of the air—hovered above the surface of the earth,—in this epoch we can imagine a pair of long-tailed, half-winged creatures which skimmed from tree to tree, perhaps giving an occasional flop—the beginning of the marvellous flight motions. Is it not likely that the Teleosaurs who watched hungrily from the swamps saw them disappear at last in a hollowed cavity beneath a rotten knothole? Here, perhaps, the soft-shelled, lizard-like eggs were laid, and when they gave forth ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... she fly in her iron mortar, urging it on with the pestle, sweeping away her traces with the broom. She dashed up to the fiery river, gave a glance, and said, 'A capital bridge!' She drove on to the bridge, but had only got half-way when the bridge broke in two, and the Baba Yaga went flop into the river. There truly did she meet ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... you why yesterday,—because that Burr girl has made me sick of curls, with that great black flop of hers stringing down her back. She'd make me sick of anything. I haven't worn my red blouse since she came out with that fiery thing of ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... the point, though," persisted Phillida, who was a zealous convert. "The dances are to make you graceful always. You so get into the poetry of motion that it's quite impossible for you ever to flop again!" ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... some girl, her hair a touzled mop, Plain-featured, round in shoulder, unpoetic, With hygienic boots that flatly flop— Old style aesthetic. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 7, 1893 • Various
... when men abandon jealousy, forsake taking tobacco, and cease to wear their beards so rudely long. Oh! to have a husband with a mouth continually smoking, with a bush of furze on the ridge of his chin, ready still to flop into his foaming chaps; ah! 't is more than ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews
... old dog, and, besides, Duke wouldn't act like that. It crept rapidly out into the upper hall, and then, as she recovered the use of her voice and began to scream, the animated cape abandoned its creeping for a quicker gait—"a weird, heaving flop," ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... trousers, his collar open, and his sleeves rolled right up to his shoulders. "Hooray!" he cried; and forgetting all his dignity as second officer in command of Her Majesty's ship, he indulged in a kind of triumphal dance, which ended with a flop, caused by his bringing one foot down flat on the ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... taught it even to Norman when he wasn't more than a baby. 'Swallow your sobs, and stiffen,' we'd say, and he'd gulp them down every time, and brace up like a little soldier. Oh, if I'd just flop and let myself go I could cry myself into a shoestring in five minutes. But thanks to early discipline we're not going to do it. Are ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... humanity by erratic leaps, and wild plunges, much shaking of his stubborn head, and lashing out of his vicious heels; now and then falling flat, and apparently dying a la Forrest; a gasp—a squirm—a flop, and so on, till the street was well blocked up, the drivers all swearing like demons in bad hats, and the chief actor's circulation decidedly quickened by every variety of kick, cuff, jerk, and haul. When the last breath seemed to have left his body, and "doctors ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... chuckle. "Bless you! I'm as nimble as a sixpence. By the way I'll show you the advantage of having a bit of whalebone in one's composition;" and with these words the Whale curled himself up, then flattened out suddenly with a tremendous flop, and, shooting through the air like a flying elephant, disappeared with a great ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... Dutch?" Conboy scoffed. "They're not the kind of people that ever stay in a hotel, they carry their blankets with 'em and flop down under their wagons like Indians. When they come to town they bring a basket of grub along, they don't spend money for a meal in any man's hotel. You put Pennsylvania Dutch into this country and there'll never be another ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... night before, the old man's sleep was broken and fitful and disturbed by dreaming, in which he heard a metal clapper striking against a brazen surface. This was one dream that came true. Just after daybreak he heaved himself out of bed, with a flop of his broad bare feet upon the floor, and stepped to the window and peered out. Half seen in the pinkish light, the Belled Buzzard flapped directly over his roof and flew due south, right toward the swamp—drawing a direct ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... sheet-iron, in one hand, and the harness in the other, you single out the cur you are after, make proper advances, and when he comes sniffling and snuffling and all the time keeping at a safe distance, you drop the sheet-iron on the snow, the brute makes a dive, and you make a flop, you grab the nearest thing grabable—ear, leg, or bunch of hair—and do your best to catch his throat, after which, everything is easy. Slip the harness over the head, push the fore-paws through, and there you are, one dog hooked up and harnessed. After licking the bites and sucking the blood, ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson
... another hole as his friend fired and saw the Indian flop down and crawl aimlessly about on hands and knees. ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... "Come on, don't be a tightwad. Swell car—poor man with no eats, not even a two-bits flop for tonight. Could yuh loosen up and slip me ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... lot, is BUCHANAN, slops over tremenjous, he do; Kinder poet, dear boy, I believe, and they always do flop round a few, Make a rare lot o' splash and no progress, like ducks in a tub, dontcher know, But cackle and splutter ain't swimming; so ROBERT, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various
... protection against the talons of an eagle; and Fritz would very likely have lost one of his eyes, or perhaps both of them, had it not been for an arrow springing from the bow of the shikaree; which, transfixing the great bird right through the gizzard, brought it down with a "flop" upon the surface of ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... Lady Wetherby, melting completely, 'when you get that yearning note in your voice I just flop and ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... I have an excellent memory for figures. Four thousand, three hundred and fifteen. Ah-h! See how instinct inspires him to flop always toward the water! Did ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... his hat, and in great perplexity).—"Well, and there is Flop, neighbour Dutton's old sheep-dog. He be ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... unsensational ponderings were displaced by a picture of a steamer in distress far away. Had I not on a similar occasion of a secret-disclosing tide heard through seven miles of insulted and sullen air the flop of an inch or so of dynamite exploded by a heartless barbarian for the illicit destruction of vivacious fish? Had I not listened with amazement to the buzz of a steamer's propeller and the throb of her engines six miles away when unaccustomed "nigger-heads" of coral showed yellow in the sun? ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... "Look at Bill Saltman there acrost the way—just dyin' to look, an' keepin' his eyes down the street all the time. Wouldn't think he'd knowed you an' me existed, to look at him. But I bet you the drinks, Smoke, if you an' me flop around the corner quick, like we was goin' somewheres, an' then turn back from around the next corner, that we run ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... suspicion, and turned their lanterns on him and followed him about, and this had such an effect upon him at last that he began to feel as if he really had done something, and he got to slinking down the by-streets and hiding in dark doorways when he heard the regulation flip-flop approaching. ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... a nearby brook he soon felt a sharp tug that told him a fish had bitten and was caught on the bent pin; so the little man drew in the string and, sure enough, the fish came with it and was landed safely on the shore, where it began to flop around ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... well complain of the system that excludes them from the Woolsack, and take a building to turn it into a Court of Chancery on their own account, as that these luckless scribblers, all fancying the Elizabethan mantle has fallen flop upon their backs, should set themselves up for Shakspeares on their own account, and seize on a metropolitan theatre as a temple for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... I yells, jumpin' to my feet an' blushin' clear to my ears. "I ain't neither one o' your parents an' I ain't your teacher. If you want to know things you ask Melisse. If you don't put a curb on yourself I'm goin' to flop myself on Starlight an' streak for the Lion Head this very minute, an' I won't stop before ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... likely's not, I'll astonish the nation, And all creation, By flyin' over the celebration! Over their heads I'll sail like an eagle; I'll balance myself on my wings like a sea-gull; I'll dance on the chimbleys; I'll stan' on the steeple; I'll flop up to winders an' scare ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... over the changes of Margate, of those that were there, those that were not, and those that were coming, and adverted to the important topic of supper, Mr. Jorrocks took out his yellow and white spotted handkerchief and proceeded to flop his Hessian boots, while Mr. Creed, with his own hands, rubbed him over with a long billiard-table brush. Green, too, put himself in form by the aid of the looking-glass, and these preliminaries being adjusted, the trio sallied forth arm-in-arm, Mr. Jorrocks occupying the centre. It was a fine, ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... to themselves, 'that villain's got his dose at last, and serve him right too.' They want to enjoy his struggles, while the heroine stands grimly at the door taking care that he doesn't get away. Then when my fist comes down flop on the stage and they realise that I am indeed done for, the yell of triumph that goes up ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... later to Andy, who was sitting on the shady side of the bunk-house staring absently at the skyline, "There's a word uh praise I've been aiming to give yuh. I've seen riding, and I've done a trifle in that line myself, and learned some uh the tricks. But I want to say I never did see a man flop his horse any neater than you done that morning. I'll bet there ain't another man in the outfit got next your play. I couldn't uh done it better myself. Where did you learn that? ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... ice, ice-cream, and destructive cold drinks. I do not myself mind hot weather in the daytime, but hot nights are killing. I can't sleep. I toss about for hours, and then, for the sake of variety, I flop, but sleep cometh not. My debts double, and my income seems to sizzle away under the influence of a hot, sleepless night; and it was just here that a certain awful thing saved me from the insanity which is a ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... They can make nests, and fill them with pretty downy chicks, they can be happy and beautiful in life and mean; they can spend their lives in jest as honerable and worthy a way as if they wuz a flyin' round, and make a good honerable appearance from day to day, till they begin to flop their wings, and fly — then their mean is not beautiful and inspirin'; no, it is fur from it. It is tuff to see 'em, tuff to see the floppin', tuff to see their vain efforts to soar through the air, tuff to see 'em fall percepitously down onto the ground agin. For they ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... stands from six to sixteen feet away (the distance depends on the size of the players and the space to play in, the larger each are the greater the distance may be) watching the parade for a short time, then begins to flop his wings (moves arms in imitation of flying) and calls out, "How many chicks have you?" The "hen" replies, "four and twenty, shoo! shoo!" The "hawk" shouts, "That's too many. I'll take a few," and then runs after the children trying to touch or "tag" them. The "hen," of ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... five men out of that thousand cannot readjust their nerves to the prospect of a violent end by powder and ball from unseen sources. Under other circumstances any one of the five might face a peril greater than that which now confronts him. Conceivably he might flop into a swollen river to save a drowning puppy; might dive into a burning building after some stranger's pet tabby cat. But this prospect which lies before him of ambling across a field with death singing about his ears, is a thing which tears with clawing fingers at the tuggs ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... was angry at being called a shell-fish, because tortoises are not fish at all, and they feel insulted if you call them so. However, he was so glad to get a wife at last, that he said nothing, only presented his back for the Jackal to jump on. Flop! came the Jackal, so heavy by this time that it was all the Tortoise could do to get him across safely. If he was tired before, he was nearly dead now. But he swam across at last; and the Jackal ran off into the forest, chuckling at the ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... herself, with the exception, perhaps, of Imogen. Her brother's "little girl" Fleur frankly puzzled Winifred. The child was as restless as any of these modern young women—"She's a small flame in a draught," Prosper Profond had said one day after dinner—but she did not flop, or talk at the top of her voice. The steady Forsyteism in Winifred's own character instinctively resented the feeling in the air, the modern girl's habits and her motto: "All's much of a muchness! ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... skinned; and then he held me while I skinned. It was very awkward. The tiny landscape almost directly beneath us was blue with the atmosphere of distance. A solitary raven discovered us, and began to circle and croak and flop. ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... han's, an' you tink dat dey kin go an' do like oder han's an' feet, but dey doesn't an' dey can't. Dere ain't no backbone runnin' up troo de min' an' wen dere ain't no backbone in de min' de pusson jest flop down yere an' flop down dar whareber dere's a com'fo'ble place to flop. Dere's 'flictions dat we kin pray agin an' pray out'n ob, an' dere's oders we jes got ter bar, an' we gits so kinder used to'm at las dat we'd be mo' mis'ble ef dey wuz tooken away. We'se got to take de bittah ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... they did," said Sue sleepily to Bunny when they were talking about this, as they lay close to the big dog in their blankets, "even if any fish did flop up, Bunny, Splash ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Camp Rest-A-While • Laura Lee Hope
... a Bridge Fiend in our midst, too! She weighed something like twenty stone, slept all forenoon, played bridge and ate chocolates all afternoon, and talked constantly of reducing. One day she went for a ride on a flop-eared mule; he got tired and lay down and rolled over and over in the sand. They had some trouble rescuing her before she got smashed. I told her the mule believed in rolling to help reduce. She didn't see the joke, but the mule and ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... down, bread in hand, pulled him to her, and patted his back. That was the price he had always to pay for bread or butter or jam. Finally, she gave him the bread and let him go. Down the back steps he came, running eagerly and calling Frank. Once more in the kitchen began the flop of the churn, once more rose the wail of ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... perfectly true, therefore the object of all religion (not religiousness), mental training and development should be the building of character. A religion that does not build up character is worthless. Those who think that they can "flop" through life, avoid, as far as possible, its discipline, make no effort to improve their character, and through believing in a certain creed can miraculously become perfect, simply by dying, are deceiving themselves. We do not become "perfect," i.e., of a strong and perfect character, ...
— Within You is the Power • Henry Thomas Hamblin
... dresses, the heavy flop of the side Cloister door as it closed behind them, and then silence once more and the thin angry voice of Canon Foster, ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... back into the water, to survive or die as the water-fates should will. It turned on one side, revealing its white belly and torn gills; then, feeling itself washed ashore by the eddy, it gave one more feeble flop in the effort to regain the safe deeps. At this moment the raccoon, pouncing with a light splash into the shallows, seized it, and with a nip through the backbone ended ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... 'twas a dead still night an' a clear run—you saw it—across the Theatre into the park, and I prayed she'd rise before she hit high timber. I set her all I dared for a quick lift. I told Mankeltow that if I gave her too much nose she'd be liable to up-end and flop. He didn't want another inquest on his estate. No, sir! So I had to fix her up in the ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... Sunday I saw three tiny old females stumble forward, three very formerly and even once bonnets perched upon three wizened skulls, and flop clumsily before the priest, and take the wafer hungrily into ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... I wanted him to go on one side of the road he was sure to be possessed of an equal desire to go on the other side. Finally I and my mule fell out. I got a big hickory and would frail him over the head, and he would only shake his head and flop his ears, and seem to say, "Well, now, you think you are smart, don't you?" He was a resolute mule, slow to anger, and would have made an excellent merchant to refuse bad pay, or I will pay your credit, for his whole composition seemed to be made up the one word—no. I frequently ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... bake — how restful is the air! You'd little think that we were somewhere north of Sixty-three, Though where I don't exactly know, and don't precisely care. The man-size mountains palisade us round on every side; The river is a-flop with fish, and ripples silver-clear; The midnight sunshine brims yon cleft — we think it's the Divide; We'll get there in a month, maybe, or maybe ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... the rail swung the dip-net, swimming full. "Down!" We let it sag quickly to Clancy and Parsons, who were at the rail. "Hi-o!" they called cheerfully, and turned the dip-net inside out. Out and down it went again, "He-yew!" and up and in it came again. "Oy-hoo!" "Hi-o!" and flop! it was turned upside down and another barrel of fat, lusty fish flipped their length against the hard deck. Head and tail they flipped, each head and tail ten times a second seemingly, until it sounded—they beat the deck so frantically—as if a regiment of gentle little drummer boys were tapping ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... Jackie. "Why, he sleeps just outside father's bed-room door, and sometimes in the night he walks up and down the corridor, and his tail goes flop up against the door. Once father thought it ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... marry, makes the spirited reply—"Faith, kind uncle, when men abandon jealousy, forsake taking of tobacco, and cease to wear their beards so rudely long. Oh, to have a husband with a mouth continually smoking, with a bush of furs on the ridge of his chin, readie still to flop into his foaming chops, 'tis more than most intolerable;" and similar indications of dislike to smoking could be quoted ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... their white petals beginning to unclose. But what slippery stalks they had. Aunt Emma held Milly, and father held Olly, while they dived their hands under the water and pulled hard. And some of the lilies came out with such short bits of stalk you could scarcely hold them, and sometimes, flop! out came a long green stalk, like a long green snake curling and twisting about in the boat. The children dabbled, and splashed, and pulled, to their hearts' content, till at last Mr. Norton told them they had got enough and now they must sit ...
— Milly and Olly • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that's certain, because I saw him flop over," replied the other; "and that yelp meant sudden pain, as sure as it stood for anything. But he managed to get off, though possibly he ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... the window, she saw Microby Dandeline approaching the cabin, her dejected old Indian pony, ears a-flop, placing one foot before the other with the extreme deliberation that characterized his every movement. Patty smiled as her eyes took in the details of the grotesque figure; the old harness bridle with patched reins and one ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... don't know what he's doing with the curling iron, but I think—wait a minute till I can speak—oh, oh, oh—I think he tripped over the apron while he was trying to flop an omelet and the omelet came down on his head. Don't speak ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... rocks, swirling, passing. Better get this job over quick. Listen: a fourworded wavespeech: seesoo, hrss, rsseeiss, ooos. Vehement breath of waters amid seasnakes, rearing horses, rocks. In cups of rocks it slops: flop, slop, slap: bounded in barrels. And, spent, its speech ceases. It flows purling, widely flowing, floating ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... it went Harry and Phil—the latter being armed with a pillow, down whose front a ghastly slit soon showed itself; but Philip fought well, and Harry was getting worsted and driven into the corner amongst the boots, where the footing was rather bad for bare feet "Flop!" Harry caught it then and staggered back. "Flop" again, for Philip was surpassing himself, and Harry having received the last blow full upon the top of his head went down upon one knee; but he rallied again, ducked to avoid the ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... we camped last night. Going up Northwest River and hunting outlets some more, took our time. Ran across geese this A.M. I went ashore and George and Wallace chased them close by. Shot leader with rifle. Then two young ones head close in shore. I killed one with pistol and two others started to flop away on top of water. Missed one with pistol, and killed other. While exploring a bay to N.W., we landed to climb ridge. George found three partridges. I shot one, wounded another, pistol. Camped to- night cheerful but ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... a faery, but some bad thing, nobody could faint at a faery. It was a demon. I was not afraid when they near put me, and the bed under me, out through the roof. I wasn't afraid either when you were at some work and I heard a thing coming flop-flop up the stairs like an eel, and squealing. It went to all the doors. It could not get in where I was. I would have sent it through the universe like a flash of fire. There was a man in my place, a tearing fellow, and he put one of them down. He went out ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... he began to flop about in the wildest and most unreasonable manner. I threw him a board, but he did not seem to have sense enough to grasp it. I saw that he would be drowned in a moment more, unless he received more ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... the wavelets—nods again, sinks a little, jerks up, and then goes down out of sight. Orion feels the weight. 'Two pounds, if he's an ounce!' he shouts: soon after a splendid perch is in the boat, nearer three pounds perhaps than two. Flop! whop! how he leaps up and down on the planks, soiled by the mud, dulling his broad back and barred sides on the grit ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... he clumbed on our back'fence An' flop his arms an' nen commence To crow, like he's a hen; But when he failed off, like he done, He didn't fool us childern none, Ner didn't crow again. An' our Hired Man, as he come by, Says, "Tom can't crow, ...
— The Book of Joyous Children • James Whitcomb Riley
... the cutest, most knowing things. I kept them at the house until they were able to care for themselves, then I turned them out mornings. I would go in the pasture and say, "Is that you nice gooses?" They would act so human, be so tickled to see me and flop against me and squawk. When Mr. Fitzgerald came home they would run for him the same way as soon as they saw the horse. They ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... faint away!" he cried excitedly. "Here, just take a swig of this; there 's plenty of water in it, and it's the stuff to pull you through. There, that's better. Great Scott, but I sure thought you was goin' to flop over that time." He assisted her to a convenient chair, then stepped back, gazing curiously into her face, the black bottle still in his hand. "What's the trouble, anyhow?" he questioned, his mind filled with sudden suspicion. "That—that fellow did ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... fat, shaggy, gray mare that drew it; her unchecked, despondent head lowering before her, while her incongruous tail waved incessantly, like the banner of a storming party. The editor did not hear the flop of the mare's feet nor the sound of the wheels, so deep was his reverie, till the vehicle was nearly opposite him. The red-faced and perspiring driver drew rein, and the journalist looked up and waved a long white hand to ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... sometimes before, the process of slow motions, rolling over loosely on one side should be practised,—remaining there until the weight all seems near the floor, and then giving way so that the force of gravity seems to "flop" it back (I use "flop" advisedly); so again resting on the other side. But one must go over by regular motions, raising the leg first heavily and letting it fall with its full weight over the other leg, so that the ankles are ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... checked his rapid, head-first and head-on slide down the slanting wire by grasping it in his gloved hands, gave a "flip-flop" and stood up, bowing to the loud applause. Jim Tracy and some of the other circus employees ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... asked Billy Louise, and there was that in her tone that made Ward's heart give a flop. "There's some of Marthy's cattle right ahead," she added hurriedly, seizing the first trifle with which to neutralize the effect of ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... Charlotte took a step forward, and prepared to introduce her nephew. Austin suddenly paused; gazed at the visitor for one instant with an expression that no one had ever seen upon his face before; and then, falling flop upon the nearest easy-chair, went straightway into a paroxysm of ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... Men representing everything from flop tents to locating agents boarded trains en route, trying to persuade the seekers to register at their respective towns. And all of them were bitter against the railroads, which were furnishing return accommodations ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... his hotcakes with a vicious flop that spattered more batter on the stove. He had been a father only a month or so, but that was long enough to learn many things about babies which he had never known before. He knew, for instance, that the baby wanted its bottle, ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... leader gives a loud "cluck." It is the signal to commence the adventurous passage. Together they expand their wings and rise in the air; the stronger birds will thus cross a river a mile wide, but some of the younger ones find it impossible to sustain themselves so long in the air, and fall flop into the water. Serious as this misadventure may appear, being birds of spirit, they do not give up the attempt in despair. Closing their wings, they spread out their broad tails, and strike away with their feet towards ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... hear you have been doing your influenza also. It's a beastly thing, as I have it, no symptoms except going flop. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... Texas, fingering the wound as roughly as if it had been in the flesh of a beast. "Reckon he'll flop round. May do mischief, if we ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... but a little lower down—by his paddock, in front o' Parkmaze Pool. I was a-bearing across towards Bloom's End, and lo and behold, there was a man just brought out o' the Pool, dead; he had un'rayed for a dip, but not being able to pitch it just there had gone in flop over his head. Men looked at en; women looked at en; children looked at en; nobody knowed en. He was covered wi' a sheet; but I catched sight of his voot, just showing out as they carried en along. 'I don't care ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... triumph, they discovered us. Then for the first time, I suppose, they understood the nature of their disaster. We could not hear their cries, but we saw arms stretched out to us, fists frantically shaken, hands lifted in prayer. We saw Mr. Tubbs flop down upon his unaccustomed knees—it was all ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
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